Joseph G. Lariosa
Correspondent and syndicated columnist of Journal Group Link International, a Chicago, Illinois-based news agency, public relations and advertising outfit, has been a veteran journalist from both sides of the Pacific. He holds a Bachelors degree in Journalism from the Lyceum University of the Philippines. He is few units short of completing his Masters degree in Journalism at Chicago, Illinois-based Roosevelt University.
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) -- In some parts of the United States, anybody who wants to vote can do so by registering to vote:
a) in person or by mail, by completing a mail-in registration form and delivering it to his city or town election officer; or
b) at any local election office in any city or town in the state and at any registration event one encounters anywhere in the state; or
c) when applying for or renewing a driver’s license at the Registry of Motor Vehicles or when applying for a service at a designated voter registration agency.
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) – Less talk, less mistake. No talk, no mistake. This appears to be the mantra adopted by Vice President Jojo Binay’s daughter,
Nancy Binay, whom I will not be voting for senator in the May 13 mid-term elections.
By snubbing fellow senatorial candidate Risa Hontiveros of Team PNoy to a debate, United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) candidate Binay showed her hubris as she is looking past the senatorial election, which she feels is already in her grasp.
CAROL STREAM, Ill. – Unlike the father of Sorsogon re-electionist Sen. Francis “Chiz’ Escudero, who discouraged Chiz from running for elective office, the father of Escudero’s province mate, Loida Nicolas Lewis, groomed her in politics early in life.
In fact, her father, Francisco J. Nicolas, gave her name recognition a head start while she was still a young student, by naming one of the first movie houses in the province after her – Loida – in the capital city of Sorsogon, instead of his three other children.
When another accomplished Filipino American – Cook County Judge Jessica O’Brien in Illinois – asked Attorney Lewis last April 12 here if she ever has entertained plans of running for office in the Philippines, her response was short and swift: "No. Kakainin tayo ng buhay, (politics will eat us alive) if we run (for office) in the Philippines. Voters are poor. You have to give them money. They get your money (but they can) not to be trusted. If you run, run to win. If you run for principle, gaga ka (you are nuts.)”
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) – When Team PNoy senatorial candidate Cynthia Villar misspoke that the nursing professionals are merely fit to become “room nurses” or caretakers, it should have been an incentive for Overseas Absentee Voters (OAV’s) to show up in full force to teach her a lesson to think first before she speaks out.
But the procrastination of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to resolve the re-enfranchisement of 238,557 OAV’s, who failed to vote in 2007 and 2010, caused some OAV’s to mark time, instead of marching forward.
This should be a good news for the wife of outgoing Sen. Manny Villar whose No. 6 position inside the Magic 12 appears entrenched if the latest Pulse Asia survey is to take hold.
“If you are strong on the facts, pound on the facts. If you are strong on the law,
pound on the law. But if you are not strong or you are weak both
on the facts and the law, pound on the table.”
- - Philippine Senator Alan Peter Cayetano,
quoting his Ateneo law professor during the Corona Impeachment Trial on May 29, 2012
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) – Two Malaysian letter writers ridiculed me for looking past the issue of self-determination as their best argument for Malaysia to keep North Borneo or Sabah out of reach of the Philippines and the Sultan of Sulu.
Quoting the Malaysian government defense against Indonesia’s claim to Sabah’s Pulau (Malay for “island”) Ligitan and Pulau Sipadan, which Malaysia won in 2002 before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), both Hamzah Mohammad and Majid Mohd believe that their ace in the hole – the "expressed wish of the majority of the people of the territory (North Borneo) in the 1963 election" if they were ready to join the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 – should let Malaysia keep its grip on Sabah.
“Men take advantage of weakness of other men. They’re just like countries that way. The strong man takes the weak man’s land.”
-Lolo Soetero Mangunharjo, stepfathe of President Barack Obama (“Dreams from My Father”) © 1995
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) – Barack Obama was probably in the third or fourth grade of his impressionable years in the late sixties in Jakarta, Indonesia when he asked his stepfather Lolo (Soetero Mangunharjo) if he ever saw a man killed.
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) – F.B. Harrison is one of the major streets in Metro Manila but I wondered why. I only learned lately from a fellow Filipino cyberfriend, Jose Sison Luzadas, that when the Philippines’ seventh civilian American Gov. Francis Burton Harrison died in Flemington, New Jersey in 1957, he left a will that his remains be repatriated to the Philippines and be buried at the Manila North Cemetery in La Loma.
When he was no longer the U.S. Governor General, Harrison became an advisor to Philippine Vice President and Foreign Affairs Secretary Elpidio Quirino. He presented to Quirino on Feb. 27, 1947 a copy of the Sabah Lease Treaty document in Malay language written on Arabic script translated by American anthropologist H. Otley Beyer of the University of the Philippines. Austrian Baron von Overbeck and British lawyer Alfred Dent told the Royal Colonial Institute on May 12, 1885 that the agreement they obtained from the Sultan of Sulu on Jan. 22, 1878 was for the lease of North Borneo and did not forfeit the Sultan’s sovereign rights.
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) – Unlike the peaceful exodus of some 200 heirs and followers of the Sultan of Sulu, escorted by some 30 armed members of the Royal Army, who went to the State of Sabah to claim their own land, the reported killing of ten Filipino people and two Malaysian policemen last Friday (March 1) were no different from the European settlers, who massacred the American Indians to take over the Indian homeland.
If there are people, who will share the blame for this tragic incident, I would say the officials of Malaysian government on one side and the Philippine government and the United Nations on the other side for ignoring their plea to give the followers of Sultan of Sulu cover.
What’s wrong if they wanted to stay in Sabah? Since when has a squatter been allowed to evict the owner of his land?
CHICAGO (FAXX/jGLi) – If the 100 armed men holed up in the village in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah are really members of the “royal army” of the Sultanate of Sulu to claim a promised land, the Philippine government may appeal to them to lay down their arms and leave peacefully.
But the Philippine government should take advantage of the opportunity by assuring them of its help by reviewing its Sabah claim before the International Court of Justice.
If the armed men are Filipinos, that is only the second time that a group of Filipinos were trying to forcibly re-take Sabah from Malaysia. In 1968, it was reported that President Marcos was training a team of saboteurs on Corregidor to infiltrate Sabah but the attempt was aborted.
CHICAGO – Filipinos, who found a new wealth (nouveau riche), like those winners of lottery or those who strike oil in the Philippines, should be reminded to keep their moneys in the Philippines, not in the United States, where their winnings or earnings will be taxed more than 40%. In the Philippines, lottery winners are only taxed by about half as much -- 20%. So, you still save a bundle.
If you earned “dirty money” or from jueteng (numbers game) or while abusing your position in the government in the Philippines, the best option is to surrender them to the Philippine government. Or bury those treasures yourself in super safe place, where nobody else knows about it even your wife or your children. And find a way to launder it when nobody is looking before your money is demonetized.
But make sure to leave a map of the loot in your safety deposit box in case you want somebody else to recover it after you die.
