First, a WARNING: The 16-year old daughter of one of my friends died last week from a mosquito bite. She had dengue fever, and died in six days!

This is a strain of mosquito that breeds in CLEAN WATER, not stagnant. The daughter was visiting from Australia and had only been to Dasmariñas, Forbes Park and Makati. The mosquito must have come from one of those villages.

Both villages must be inspected for possible breeding sites and if large numbers are found the villages should be fumigated. I understand some residents object to fumigation. I suggest in this case there is no choice, a slight inconvenience for a few hours is nothing compared to the death of one child.

What if it were their children? Mosquitoes don’t discriminate, everyone in Forbes and Dasma is at risk. And in other villages too. This is a new strain of dengue that is excessively virulent. Fatality rate can be as high as 90. It’s an epidemic in the making, and the Department of Health (DOH) needs to step in urgently to take whatever measures are necessary to combat this plague.

I cannot stress too highly the time to act is now. We were able to identify 388 deaths from this strain of dengue already, and there may well have been more.

The government did well on containing the potential bird flu epidemic, they need to do the same with dengue now.

My heartfelt sympathy again to the family, and all those others who lost a loved one.

Now to meandering at the beginning of the year.

Why is there a Commission on Appointments in Congress?

The Constitution is very clear, there are three separate, INDEPENDENT branches of government. So by what right can Congress intervene in this way? The president should be able to choose his/her own team, people the president is comfortable working with. It’s only in the areas of independent commissions such as the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) where the president’s choices should be independently confirmed – but aren’t. It’s the wrong way around. Congress should be able, like anybody else to comment on, even investigate the performance and actions of an Administration executive, but not have a say in who it is.

If such an iniquitous system is to continue, then the president should have the equal right to approve, or not committee chairman in Congress. That’s only fair.

Anyway, it’s an inutile system. If Congress bypasses someone the president just re-appoints them to continue with their job. It’s a practice (congress confirmation) that should be stopped.

Has this nation forgotten so quickly that Estrada plundered the nation – as proven by conviction in a court of law?

Now Estrada says he may run for the presidency in 2010 and from what I read would have a good chance of winning. The public would vote a convicted criminal into the leadership. What a country. But wait a minute, the Constitution says the president may only serve one term in a lifetime. That it was cut short may provide some justification to bypass this requirement, but the intent was clearly there. He’d had his chance, that’s it.

To nit pick over the word “re-election” as to whether it applies only to a sitting president or not ignores the much more fundamental point: What was intended. A reading of the constitutional minutes and the statements of con com commissioners make it quite clear that the intent was for a Filipino to be president only once in a lifetime and only for six years.

Maybe, just maybe some lawyer will find, and get the Supreme Court to agree to some kind of “loophole”. But that’s the whole point you don’t lead the country on a loophole, you run it in faithful rendition to the nation’s Constitution. Incidentally I don’t think the Supreme Court will rule in his favor, this is a court that has shown it is independently-minded and a hewer to the intent of the Constitution.

The Constitution’s intent should be respected over all other considerations. Maybe a dictionary does define re-election as “immediately following” (I can’t be bothered looking to find out), maybe a strict legal interpretation could agree it applies to only a sitting president.

It doesn’t matter, the people voted a Constitution where the intent was one term only. You don’t violate the people’s will in a true democracy. It’s been accepted this way for 20 years and should remain so until a people’s vote again changes the Constitution.

Estrada was convicted of plunder, a pardon doesn’t make him innocent it just says he doesn’t have to serve the penalty the crime dictates. He plundered the nation, he stole the people’s money, the courts found so. It’s amazing that a convicted criminal who was a failure in the presidency can consider running again, and that otherwise sensible people would even consider supporting him. Sometimes it is indeed a sick society.

To grant the farmers from Sumilao the land now legitimately owned by San Miguel Corporation because it sells well to the public and panders to emotions is a worrying discard of the rule of law that can only raise concern within the business community: Could they be next?

When the law is arbitrarily overruled democracy crumbles. Democracy is built on the rule of law not the capricious whim of a president pandering to popularity.

There was not legal justification for the decision. It, in fact, violated the law so I expect San Miguel will indeed challenge it in court. They should. If the president is just going to overturn legal contracts for political reasons then I can absolutely assure her foreign investors will go to Vietnam. The Filipino jobless will remain jobless.

Creating a task force is not the solution to a problem.

It may be an interim step towards arriving at a solution, but in the past six years 60 task forces have been created (that we could find, heaven knows how many others exist). 30 were abolished later. Only 2 of them have led to resolution of the problem. Sorry, one task force has been separately successful. The task force on hunger mitigation. According to a news report the task force first identified the root cause – “lack of adequate food.” A dictionary could do better. But it gets worse (no, you couldn’t get worse than that – so, at least as bad). “The strategy here is to focus on both demand and supply, the task force head said. On the supply side, government saw the need to increase food productivity and enhance the efficiency of logistics and food delivery.” Even economics 101 goes beyond that. I’m sorry if I sound sarcastic, but really this is just too much. No wonder task forces never achieve anything. Increasing food productivity, etc. is, of course, not the correct strategy because it mimics that tired old saw about giving a man a fish, or teaching him how to. The task force should focus on “how to”. “How to” is to give them a steady income – here in the Philippines. By all means increase food productivity but that is not related to hunger and poverty, giving people an income is what does it.

The President has directly reporting to her 24 Cabinet members, 77 heads of GOCCs, 15 agencies and assorted entities and, 30 task forces. As anyone who’s studied management will tell you this is a recipe for disaster. No one, no matter how superhuman they think they are can manage 140 plus people.

The pyramid might have been designed, or at least used by the Egyptians but it’s the essential shape for effective management of an organization.

The President should create her own pyramid. No more than 6 Lieutenants reporting to her, and then each group subdivided into sub-groups, or clusters as it’s often called e.g. The Economic Cluster of Cabinet Secretaries.

I watched a movie the other night of four orphan boys looking for a family but finding it was in themselves where the solace of family lies.

It was a touching story of discovering life – and conquering it. It was too the ephemeral passage of life. We all die eventually, which is why I can’t understand the avarice of power hungry groups whose only desire is to have more of it. For what? So their coffin will be gold?

I have only two desires in life, to leave it a slightly better place than when I entered it; and to make some other people’s lives a little better. It seems to me that if we all strived for this the world (or at least the Philippines) might indeed be a better place.

A better place it would not have been if Jalosjos had been freed. I asked several men what they’d do if this man had raped their 11-year old daughter. The answer was universal, they’d kill the bastard. I read this incredible statement that he’d served 16 years in prison which was sufficient punishment (now it’s extended another two).

Excuse me, the judgment was a double life sentence. Which I suppose, logically, means you spend the rest of your life in jail then after you die your corpse spends an equal time there. What it doesn’t mean is that you get freedom a mere 16, or 18 years later.

This society is indeed sick when the rapist of a child can be treated with deference in jail (just see the pictures of the house he had built inside – no 6x6 cell for him), then released. And a President who plundered a nation can be exonerated a few weeks later because he was thought to be a potential political threat. The threat is to a society that’s lost its moral underpinning.