By MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA
I got mixed reactions on President Benigno Aquino III latest pronouncement that he welcomes Charter Change (ChaCha)
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Ever since I was espousing in this column that to get rid of that present 12 million unemployed Filipinos, over abused Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW), and the moral backlash brought by the migration of Filipinos abroad where the families at home committed immoralities and indulging to illegal drugs because no one watch them, the government should open its restricted xenophobic economic 60-40% provision that favors the financially overstretch Filipino oligarchs in the Constitution.
My usual argument: More foreign investment in our country means more jobs. More jobs means OFWs from Libya, and other countries would no longer be vulnerable to rape and other abuses. Husband or wife does not resort to infidelity with fellow OFWs or the woman or man next door in the Philippines, or sons and daughters don’t become drug addict or impregnated at an early age because a parent or parents are there to watch them grow.
My usual poser: Why the standard of living of a Thai is much better than those of the Filipinos who in the 1970s have almost the same number of population? Aside from their aggressive government sponsored family planning program, they snared, according to the World Investment Report, last year $12.95 billion of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) while the Philippines contented herself with a minuscule $3.9 billion in the same year.
Now it seems that I digress to why I have a mixed reaction on the president’s amenability for Cha-Cha. Our balding president smarted as seen on his State of the Nation Address (SONA) how he was being treated by the 13-0 of the Supreme Court because of his Disbursement Acceleration Program that jerk-up, er, perk- up by more than 6% the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
It means the 13-0 DAP’s decision of the high tribunal is the Sword of Damocles that hangs above his head.
It is a threat to his limb because whether he likes it or not he goes to jail in a non –bailable crime of plunder through technical malversation because he usurped the power of congress to allocate the DAP’s P177 billion funds and channeled to other economic stimulating projects.
“But he did not pocket any of the P177 billion. He did not profit for himself on the DAP” Objected recently to me by a lawyer when we were conversing.
“That’s beside the point. What we are seeing here is the probable cause for technical malversation as provided in the Revised Penal Code and the Special Law on Plunder found by the Ombudsman and the Sandigabayan, and the warrant of arrest issued by the latter against former president Aquino in 2016. It was just like Gloria Arroyo who was thrown in the calaboose without bail”.
