“Passion helps you in protecting the community, and public service will follow it. That has been my career. It is the passion that drives me to do what I do every day.”
–Catherine Cortez-Masto

By Alex P. Vidal

WE admire local legislators who don’t raise a whimper even if they don’t have a committee chairmanship.
While a chairmanship in any committee will help expand the horizons of their legislative works and responsibilities, their performances won’t be measured by how many committee chairmanships they have cornered, but rather by how they perform; or how many resolutions and ordinances are they going to deliver.
Some legislators with hidden agenda use their chairmanships in the committees they are assigned to grandstand and “earn extra income” (Having covered the legislative beat extensively, I know how they do the “monkey business” there).
These are the types of public servants we should dump and sneer at.
Those who don’t salivate for committee chairmanship normally are legislators that are “team players.”
If no committee chairmanship is assigned to them because of political reasons or otherwise, they don’t harbor hard feelings; and they don’t give a damn.
They are motivated by passion to serve and just want to be part of the team; they want the team to succeed even if they don’t get any reward and credit.
These are the types of public servants we should encourage to join the government and elect every election day.

Some of the best national high schools in Iloilo are in the municipalities of Pavia, Oton, Sta. Barbara, Guimbal, Barotac Nuevo, Zarraga.
But they weren’t among those awarded with “Seal of Good Education Governance” by the Synergeia Foundation.
​Those awarded were the municipalities of Alimodian, Mina, Cabatuan, Concepcion, and Lambunao.
They recently got the seals and educational package worth P1.5 million and P100,000 worth of gasoline for the mobility of their respective local school boards and educational trainings, through their mayors.
The Synergeia Foundation and USAID, in partnership with PLDT and Smart, award the Seal of Good Education Governance to a new batch of cities and municipalities in the Philippines that have exerted outstanding efforts to deliver basic education to their constituents every year.
Local governments are reportedly rarely featured prominently in the news.
“These rare times are on abuse of their power and inefficiencies. But there is another side to their stories. These are their stories of excellence and outstanding performance,” according to the program’s history. “These are sources of hope and inspiration–rare commodities during times of turbulence and uncertainties.”

“Midnight” deals tainted by anomalies entered into by past administrations should not only be rescinded by present administrations.
They should be thoroughly reviewed if they violated the bidding and procurement procedures so that appropriate cases can be filed in the Sandiganbayan.
Under the law, the Sandiganbayan tries and decides criminal and civil cases against government officials and employees accused of graft and corruption and similar other offenses.
Anomalous transactions that have been “aborted” by the change of administration (meaning the current administrations that have stumbled into these shady deals are no longer interested to pursue and implement the deals) do not die a natural death mainly because they have been rescinded.
The deals’ original authors should still be prosecuted on the premise that if they won in the recent midterm elections, the anomalous transactions would have been pushed through with prejudice to the taxpayers.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)