MISSING THE ACTION by: Kiko Ortelano

This year is still the year of Panlilio BASHING!

I have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen any government official subjected to so much open hostilities. Not even the dictator President Marcos nor the current and most corrupt president of our country has been exposed to this!

Obviously, no one fears Governor Panlilio.

Is this bad? NO.

To me, this clearly means that democracy is really working in Pampanga.

Anybody can say anything about or against the governor. What is sad about this is that those who have to protect their turf, thier "other sources" of livelihood, their benefactors, etc., are the noisiest and are really having a field year bashing the governor. I just hope that the silent majority of our Kabalens can stay active in making their voices heard and not allow themselves to be outshone by the voiciferous minority led by the TRADPOLS.

How do we do this?

The churches should be at the forefront of this fight. The JESUS IS LORD group led by former and future(?) presidentiable Brother Eddie Villanueva have been most consistent in this regard. The other Christian and Protestant Churches and Ministries have also been consistent.

Sadly, the biggest group among the churches in the country, the Roman Catholic Church, seem to be disarrayed in regard to providing a very clear direction for Her flock. There are Catholic Organizations who are very active participants in ensuring Good Governance and Responsible Citizenship in Pampanga. The Couples for Christ group is foremost among them. But the other organizations seem to have gone over to the sidelines of silence.

The Academe should also be into this. They have the power of influence to a good number of our people, specially the youth. The Academe also have the tools to organize people better. However, it is sad to note that they too have gone over to the sidelines of silence.

The local media should also be into this. But the Panlilio bashing continues in local media as I write this. It is not as bad as it was during the first year of the governor's term. A few local journalists have been standing up for the good actions of the governor. Sadly, there are those who only see the bad actions of the governor. They can even impute negative meanings to worthy actions and ignore the positives of the governor. Perhaps the dictum of BALANCE NEWS can be practiced even more accurately by some of our Kabalen Journalists.

The ordinary Kapampangan will always want to have a peaceful and prosperous life. We had peace before but our province was being robbed dry by some of our previous government officials. We can not be prosperous if we allow this robberry to happen again! We will not have sufficient services to our Kabalens if we allow the greedy few to control our province again. We will stop being the envy of a lot of our neighboring provinces if we let our resources' benefits be wasted by allowing a select few to pocket the monies out of it.

We will never be prosperous if we do not stop the bondage of jueteng in our lives. We will never be prosperous if we allow jueteng to erode our culture of hard work. We will never be prosperous if we continue relying on the ridiculous chance of winning big in gambling.

Let us go on bashing the governor when he is wrong. Let us also go on also by bashing ourselves when we forget the culture of hard work that our ancestors passed on to us. Let us also bash ourselves when we commit sins of ommission by turning a blind eye on the injustices that happen around us everyday.

When all of that is done, WE CAN BASK IN THE GLORY OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY amongst our midst.

LUID KA KABALEN!