“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

Local legislators who do not whimper when they do not get their desired committee chairmanship should be admired. While a chairman position does expand one’s scope of legislative responsibility, performance is not measured on the number of positions held but on the resolutions and ordinances they deliver.
Some legislators have a hidden agenda and use the chairmanship as an opportunity to grandstand (or “earn extra income”)—having covered the legislative beat extensively, I know there is “monkey business” that goes on. These are the types voters should sneer at and dump.
Those not desperate for a chairmanship post are normally “team players;” they continue to work without harboring hard feelings and are motived to serve. These are the types that should be encouraged.

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Some of the best high schools in Iloilo are located in Pavia, Oton, Santa Barbara, Guimbal, Barotac Nuevo, Zarraga; however, they were not recognized with the Seal of Good Education Governance. Meanwhile, schools in Alimodian, Mina, Cabatuan, Concepcion, and Lambunao were each awarded a seal, which came with an educational package worth P1.5 million and P100,000 worth of gasoline.
The Seal of Good Education Governance is awarded by the Synergeia Foundation and United States Agency for International Development, in partnership with PLDT and Smart Communications, to recognized localities that have “exerted outstanding efforts to deliver basic education to their constituents every year.”

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Current administrations should not only rescind “midnight deals” by preceding administrations that are tainted with anomalies but should review them to see if they violated proper procedure; if so, proper charges should be filed before the Sandiganbayan.
Anomalous transactions that are “aborted” by new administrations (current administrations that have stumbled upon the said deals and are no longer interested in pursuing them) do not die a natural death because they have been rescinded. The original authors of the said deal should still be prosecuted on the premise of, if they won in the recent midterm elections, the anomalous transactions would have been pushed through with prejudice to the taxpayers.

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Alex P. Vidal, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo./WDJ