'Salamat sa Diyos'
"Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us." SOCRATES
By Alex P. Vidal
DAO, Capiz -- Moving away languidly with the help of a bamboo cane in duck-walk, Esparanza Gardoce, 89, attributed the arrival of relief items composed of rice, canned goods, noodles and bottled water to the Divine Providence.
"Salamat sa Diyos makaka-on na ang mga apo ko (Thank God my grandchildren will have something to eat now)," hissed the diminutive Gardoce of Brgy. Duyoc, Dao, Capiz.
"Diyos namon nga makagagahum salamat gid oh Ginoo. Dali na wala taho to sa balay (Our most powerful God thank you, Lord. C'mon let's go home now nobody's watching our house)," gushed Lolita Capapas, 87, putting her arm on neighbor Gardoce's shoulders.
HOME
They walked home together teeming with excitement and exuberance over the food stuffs that could last for two to three days. Dao Mayor Joselito "Bobo" Escutin personally supervised the distribution of relief goods for 631 families aided by ABS-CBN Iloilo and Iloilo Cyber Cockers Club, Inc headed by Ray Rico in a joint project dubbed "Build A Shelter Project For Typhoon Yolanda Victims."
Twenty three other families whose houses were totally washed out when super-typhoon Yolanda struck on November 8 last year in Brgy. Duyoc were given G.I. sheets.
Myrna Venancio, 44, a single parent and a laundrywoman, who got 8 pieces of G.I. sheets, said she will start to rebuild her totally damaged house for her four children aged 18, 17, 11, and 5.
Daniel Lacheca, 46, a driver, and wife Elsa, 44, a laundrywoman, said they will rebuild their house if they have additional materials.
DUMP TRUCKS
The team, composed of two DPWHS dump trucks, brought 200 G.I. sheets. Escutin and his father, former Mayor Ernesto, continued the distribution of relief goods in Brgy. Malonoy where 335 families were benefited.
With a population of 31,911 composed of 20 barangays, Dao, a fourth class municipality in the second district of Capiz, was among the towns in the province badly hit by Yolanda. All the 20 multi-purpose gyms in 20 barangays were totally destroyed, said Escutin.
"We are here because our group (Iloilo Cyber Cockers Club, Inc.) is not only for cockfighting but also for social service, and this project is part of our civic projects and care for those who are in need," said Rico, village chief of Blk 22, NHA Mandurriao, Iloilo City.
"If I could go, I would tell the truth to the North American people. President Reagan personally ordered my visa to be denied." TOMAS BORGE
By Alex P. Vidal
Going to media and "blasting" the U.S. Embassy in Manila for cancelling his tourist visa, was like permanently saying goodbye to any chance to get another visa in the future for former Ifugao congressman and governor Gualberto Lumauig.
But the U.S. Embassy only cancelled Lumauig's B1/B2 or tourist visa, it did not ban him from applying again in the future.
Criticizing the U.S. Embassy in public would not stop the embassy from its decision to cancel any visa.
A visa issued by any embassy is a privilege, not a right given to any citizen in the Philippines who wishes to travel to the United States and other countries.
The U.S. Embassy appeared to have exercised fairness when it informed Lumauig that his visa had been cancelled, thus he should not make any attempt to use it if he was planning to travel to the United States before Christmas Day last December 2013.
It would have been another story if Lumauig wasn't told about the cancellation and he suffered embarrassment after being prevented from leaving the country in the immigration.
REASON
Embassy officials may have valid reasons, but they reserve the right not to reveal these reasons in public as a matter of policy and security.
The fact that Lumauig immediately sent a letter to U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg to seek for answers, bringing the matter to media was not anymore necessary.
The U.S. Embassy would not give back what it had revoked only because the matter was discussed in media.
The U.S. Embassy may have thoroughly studied Lumauig's case before making the decision to cancel his visa, and would not give special treatment to anybody.
Any visa holder--congressman or not--would have been treated fairly.
It was reported that two days before Christmas, Lumauig received a letter from the U.S. Embassy. In part, it stated, "The U.S. Embassy hereby informs you that additional information became available after the visa was issued and your B1/B2 visa with expiration date of 03 October 2021 has been revoked."
REQUEST
Furthermore the letter stated, the report said, "The U.S. Embassy requests you to present your passport with the aforementioned visa... so that we may physically cancel the visa. Your passport will be returned to you."
ABS-CBN New reported that in the latter part of the letter, the embassy's Nonimmigrant Unit Chief Mignon Cardentey stated that Lumauig was welcome to apply for a visa again after the cancellation.
Before receiving the letter, the report said "Lumauig was all set to travel to the United States to see his ailing son who had just undergone brain surgery, so it was a great disappointment for him when he received a call from the U.S. Embassy informing him that his B1/B2 or U.S. tourist visa was cancelled."
"Gulat na gulat ako! On December 20 I was coming down from the province to Manila to catch a scheduled flight to the U.S. the following day, December 21. Midway en route to Manila I got a call from Ms. Laly Javier from the U.S. Embassy who identified herself as an information officer to tell me my visa was cancelled. I asked her, 'Why? What have I done?' She said she's not in a position to tell me why," Lumauig told ABS-CBN News.
SHOCKED
"Lumauig was shocked, especially since he had already traveled to the U.S. about 50 times since the 60's, and his 10-year visa is valid up to the year 2021," the report added.
Report said Lumauig did not anymore attempt to proceed with his travel. "I was very much disappointed but I'm not pleading for any reconsideration. Pero yung ginawa nilang 'yan, I think I deserve an explanation. I've been in government for so long with a record that's unblemished," said Lumauig.
ABS CBN News quoted Lumauig as saying, "I'm not anymore interested sa visa. I just want to know. It's my right to be told."
The TV network further reported: "Just last year, Lumauig had been to the U.S. twice. When he was still active in politics, he was sponsored by the U.S. to study at Harvard University.
"He doesn't even look like a terrorist, he said, especially at the age of 80 and could hardly walk.
ATTORNEY
"But according to one New York licensed attorney, the embassy's letter stated that they received additional information that led to the cancellation. But as to what the information is, no one but U.S. authorities knows.
"Atty. Howard Calleja said it is entirely up to the discretion of the U.S. whether or not to reveal the purported information.
"Calleja added a visa is not a right, but merely a privilege. This is no different when visa applications are denied and the reason is not disclosed.
"'That, at the time you applied for the visa, you withheld something, an information, and if proven true that is a big violation,' he said.
"ABS-CBN News tried to get a statement from the U.S. Embassy but they have yet to respond.What is clear is that all US visas can be cancelled at any given time as they continue to investigate visa holders all around the globe even if the visa has already been awarded."
"What is it about me that you hate so much?" a man asked his wife six months into his sobriety. "Everything!" she replied with a glare. ANONYMOUS QUOTE
By Alex P. Vidal
Can we deal with anger, mankind's most destructive emotion?
In her book, Codependent No More: How to stop controlling others and start caring for yourself, Melody Beattie describes anger as "may be a commonplace emotion, but it is tough to deal with."
Most of us haven't been taught how to deal with anger, because people show us how they deal with anger; they don't teach us. And most people show us inappropriate ways to deal with anger because they're not sure either, Beattie suggests.
According to her, people may give us good advice.
"Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger." "Don't seek revenge." Many of us can't adhere to these mandates, she says. Some of us think they mean: "Don't be angry." Many of us aren't sure what we believe about anger, adds Beattie.
Some of us believe lies about anger.
She warns that repressed anger, like other repressed emotions, causes problems.
"Sometimes our anger may leak out inappropriately," she explains. "We scream at someone we didn't intend to scream at. We wrinkle up our faces, curl our lips, and help people feel like they don't want to be around us. We slam dishes around even though we can't afford to break anything of material value because we've already lost so much."
FACE
Other times our anger may show its face in different ways, reveals Beattie, who stresses: "We may find ourselves not wanting, unable, or refusing to enjoy sex. We may find ourselves unable to enjoy anything. Then we add more self-hatred to our already heaping pile by wondering what is wrong with us and going on our hostile way."
When people ask us what's wrong, we tighten our jaw and say, "Nothing. I feel just fine, thank you." We may even start doing little sneaky mean things or big sneaky mean things to get even with those we're angry at, she warns.
"If anger is repressed long enough, it will ultimately do more than leak out. Unpleasant feelings are like weeds. They don't go away when we ignore them; they grow wild and take over. Our angry feelings may one day come roaring out. We say things we don't mean. Or, as usually happens, we may say what we really mean," Beattie observes.
CONTROL
"We may lose control and unleash ourselves in a fighting, spitting, screeching, hair-pulling, dish-breaking rage. Or we may do something to hurt ourselves. Or the anger may harden into bitterness, hatred, contempt, revulsion, or resentment."
Beattie says "we have every right to feel anger. We have every right to feel as angry as we feel. So do other people. But we also have a responsibility--primarily to ourselves--to deal with our anger appropriately."
Dealing with repressed emotions will not happen overnight. Dealing with a significant amount of repressed anger may take time and effort. Dealing with new anger takes practice, she counsels.
SUGGESTIONS
Beattie makes some suggestions for dealing with anger:
1. Address any myths we have subscribed to about anger.
2. Feel the emotion.
3. Acknowledge the thoughts that accompany the feeling.
4. Examine the thinking that goes with the feeling.
5. Make a responsible decision about what, if any, action we need to take.
6. Don't let anger control us.
7. Openly and honestly discuss our anger, when it's appropriate.
8. Take responsibility for our anger.
9. Talk to people we trust.
10. Burn off the anger energy.
11. Don't beat ourselves or others for feeling angry.
12. Write letters we don't intend to send.
13. Deal with guilt.
Once we start dealing with anger, Beattie says we may notice we feel angry most of the time. "That's common," he explains. "We're like kids with a new toy. We'll settle down with it. Be patient. We aren't going to deal with it perfectly. No one does. We'll make mistakes, but we'll also learn from them. The reason we're told not to seek revenge is because getting even is a common response to anger. If we've done or do some inappropriate things, deal with earned guilt and go on from there. Strive for progress."
GENTLE
She advises that "we need to be gentle with ourselves if we've been repressing loads of angry feelings. Things take time. We may need to be that angry for now. When we don't need to be angry any more, we'll quit feeling angry if we want to. If we think we might be stuck in anger, get professional help."
Beattie continues: "Some people believe we never have to become angry; if we control our thinking and are appropriately detached; we will never react with or wallow around in anger. That's probably true; however, I prefer to relax and see what happens, rather than guard myself rigidly."
"I don't believe that anger should become our focus in life, nor should we look for reasons to become angry to test ourselves. 'It's not good to be angry all the time,' says counselor Esther Olson. It's not healthy to act hostile. There is much more to life than anger. But it's okay to feel anger when we need to."
“There is nothing that will cure the senses but the soul, and nothing that will cure the soul but the senses” OSCAR WILDE
By Alex P. Vidal
From Willis Harman's Global Mind Change, the promise of the 21st century, we learned that there is a set of 10 premises, which, if encountered in a textbook a few decades ago, would hardly have aroused a question.
It is humbling to the educated Westerner to realize that to an indeterminable extent, science, like the traditional belief systems of "primitive" cultures, describes a world that is shaped by its built-in assumptions, observed Harman.
The rational set of premises for a scientific age, according to Harman, are the following:
1. The only conceivable ways in which we can acquire knowledge are through our physical senses, and perhaps by some sort of information transmission through the genes. The sole way in which we extend our understanding of the nature of the universe is through empirical science--that is, the exploration of the measurable world through instrumentation that augments our physical senses.
2. All qualitative properties (at least the ones we can talk about scientifically) are ultimately reducible to quantitative ones (for example, color is reduced to wavelength, thought to measurable brain waves, hate and love to the chemical composition of glandular secretions).
3. There is a clear demarcation between the objective world, which can be perceived by anyone, and subjective experience, which is perceived by the individual alone, in the privacy of his/her own mind. Scientific knowledge deals with the former; the latter may be important to the individual, but its exploration does not lead to the same kind of publicly verifiable knowledge.
4. The concept of free will is a prescientific attempt to explain behavior that scientific analysis reveals is due to a combination of forces impinging on the individual from the outside, together with pressures and tensions internal to the organism.
5. What we know as consciousness or awareness of our thoughts and feelings is a secondary phenomenon arising from physical and biochemical processes in the brain.
6. What we know as memory is strictly a matter of stored data in the central nervous system, somewhat analogous to the storage of information in a digital computer.
7. The nature of time being what it is, there is obviously no way in which we can obtain knowledge of future events, other than by rational prediction from known causes and past regularities.
8. Since mental activity is simply a matter of dynamically varying states in the physical organism (primarily in the brain), it is completely impossible for this mental activity to exert any effect directly on the physical world outside the organism.
9. The evolution of the universe and of man has come about through physical causes (such as random mutation, natural selection), and there is no justification for any concept of universal purpose in the evolution, or in the development of consciousness, or in the strivings of the individual.
10. Individual consciousness does not survive the death of the organism; or if there is any meaningful sense in which the individual consciousness persists after the death of the physical body we can neither comprehend it in this life or in any way obtain knowledge about it.
People could disregard the Biblical warnings against fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions.
"The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: It's a girl." SHIRLEY CHISHOLM
By Alex P. Vidal
Two experts with opposing views about human sexuality have produced some of the greatest arguments that became subjects of intelligent debates among scholars in this age.
Dr. S. I. McMillen wrote a controversial book that opposed some of the views of Dr. Alfred Charles Kinsey and "as a result of a thousand sighs for the many people who left my office without receiving adequate help."
Kinsey was already dead for seven years when McMillen's book, None Of These Diseases, was published in 1963; thus, he was not around to defend himself when McMillen devoted chapter 7 to crush and expose Kinsey's numerous "faults" in the Kinsey Reports, two books on human sexual behavior: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
McMillen, a graduate of University of Pennsylvania Medical School and the London School of Tropical Medicine, pointed out: "I have written the prescription that I would have given these patients if only I had the time. I hasten to add the counsel is not original with me. When God led the Israelites out of afflicted Egypt, He promised them that if they would obey His statutes, He would put 'none of these diseases' upon them."
PIED PIPER
McMillen recalled the story of the pied piper of Hamelin who enticed the younger set to follow the enchanting, irresistible music of his flute.
He led the children into a cave in a mountain, and they were never seen again.
Each generation produces a swarm of pied pipers, he proceeded. In the middle of this century one of them swung down the main streets of America, playing the catchy tune of "sex freedom."
He sprightly, jazzy jingles promised emancipation from the "traditions" and "horrible confinement of religious inhibitions."
There were many who left their homes and loved ones to race down the street after this alluring music.
The piper had neither flute nor the waving hips of a rock-and-roll singer.
He was a zoologist who gathered certain statistics on the theme of sex, and he shook them and beat upon them like a tambourine.
First, let us look at the statistics he gathered. He and his associates had interviewed 5,940 women, questioning them about the intimate details of their past and present sexual lives.
From these reports, our piper figured the percentages of the women engaged in this and that sexual perversion, the percentages of those who had had premarital experiences, and the percentages of those who were guilty of extramarital affairs.
From these percentages he drew certain conclusions.
EXCEPTION
Authorities and specialists have taken exception to this report and to the conclusions that Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey made. In the first place, Kinsey interviewed only one out of every fourteen thousand women in the country.
Second, these women were certainly not typical of the average American woman, because in this abnormal sampling the ratio of single women to married women was three times greater than that found in the country at large, and the ratio of college women to noncollege women was ten times greater.
Third, the only women in the group were women who had volunteered to lay bare the details of their intimate sexual lives.
Such women are rare in more ways than one. Women who would volunteer to reveal sexual secrets would be women who had, probably as a result of their sexual experiences, lost an inborn female reticence.
Many of these women stated that they enjoyed being bitten during the sex act, and that trait certainly marks them as being abnormal. It is a neurotic mind that can translate pain into pleasure.
Kinsey's sampling was loaded with typical and masochistic women.
It was the sexual image of this group of women--who were strangely devoid of the natural inhibitions of women--that was superimposed on all other women.
FAULTS
There are number of other faults in the Kinsey report. First, it is inferred that if the "average woman" is engaged in an act, then that act is advisable.
There is a gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon between that which is advisable and that which is average.
The average Hindu drinks filthy water on his pilgrimages, but it is certainly not advisable, since the Hindus die of cholera by the thousands.
The faulty implication in the Kinsey report is that it is advisable for women to adjust to that which is average, even to a badly distorted average.
Second, having classified a woman and a hog in the same zoological category, Kinsey could see no reason a woman's sexual life should not be patterned after that of a hog.
A hog has no horrible inhibitions about sex; why should a woman?
Many people thought the reasoning seemed plausible, smacking as it did of science.
After all, they asked themselves, had not "certain skilled psychiatrists" told Kinsey that restraints were bad for the mind?
Now, if men and women mingled freely in the pen of promiscuity, the ultimate in living could be achieved. There would be no restraints and no frustrations.
Here at last was the panacea that could cure all their longings.
People could disregard the Biblical warnings against fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions.
They could follow the piper of promiscuity into a Utopia where nary a restriction would be placed on sexual impulses, however wild and bizarre they might be.
'OUTDATED LAWS'
This zoologist deplored the fact that the "outdated laws" of the moral code were a great hindrance to the operation of his ideas.
But modern pipers feel that these laws will soon be changed. Until they are, they suggest that their followers seek "to avoid open conflict with the law."
I suppose rape of little girls and defenseless women should not be attempted if there were the probability of conflict with the law.
It is not a little strange that a zoologist, a specialist in animals, should set himself up as an authority on the sex life of women? Dealing with the purely animal aspects of the matter, he fails completely to realize the deeply human relationships involved.
What do medical specialists think about putting women and hogs in the same sexual category?
Two specialists, a gynecologist and a psychiatrist, resented this bull-in-the-china-shop intrusion so strongly that they wrote a book to refute Kinsey's erroneous statements.
SPREAD
Kinsey assured his followers that the spread of venereal diseases through premarital intercourse is "a relatively unimportant matter today."
This salesman of promiscuity is at variance with the U.S. Public Health Service which recently reported: "We estimate the reservoir of untreated syphilitics today at 1,200,000 cases and that the true annual incidence is 60,000 cases."
It has been further estimated that the annual number of new cases of gonorrhea in this country is 1,000,000 cases."
Kinsey is far removed from the best medical opinions when he makes repeated inferences that girls who engage in premarital petting have more successful marriages than those who do not.
Medical specialists, who deal with people rather than animals, refute his deduction: Such advice is scientifically wrong.
There is no premium for premarital petting to orgasm. There are no penalties for not indulging in this manner. Experience proves that neurotic girls are the most persistent petters and that emotionally healthy girls usually reject sex without love.
Successful marriage and sexual adjustment are based more on gradually established confidence, liking and mutual respect than on any premarital trial and error sexual process.
ENEMIES
The real enemies of man's sexual happiness are those who would entice him away from his home, his family, and the Biblical standards.
Few people have ever stopped to realize that the blessings of sex and civilization that we enjoy exist because a large proportion of people take heed of the words of Jesus: "But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh."
People who take this Scriptural standard as their model will save themselves from many diseases and a thousand heartaches.
"Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor." SHOLOM ALEICHEM
By Alex P. Vidal
What is the purpose of our life? A reader once asked Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, about the purpose of life.
"It seems to me that the most important question of all is the purpose of life," the reader enthused. "What are we doing here on earth? What is our destiny? How do various thinkers approach this most urgent and baffling of all questions?"
Adler's answer: "Let us begin by asking the purpose of the question about the purpose of life. What do men have in mind when they ask this question? Asking it is a peculiarly human phenomenon. Other creatures just exist and go on unquestioningly to pursue their natural ends--to be a tree or a bird or a stone. It is man's peculiar misery or glory that he perennially poses the question of the purpose of his own existence.
"What, then, are men who ask this question trying to discover? Are they asking about the destiny appointed by God for man to achieve through his earthly existence? Does man have an ultimate goal beyond the sphere of the temporal experience? And if so, what must he do to attain it? The Christian doctrine of the Kingdom of God as man's ultimate destiny is one of the answers to the question.
HUMAN LIFE
"Or are men asking whether human life can be made significant on earth by achieving all the perfections of which it is capable? In the philosophy of Aristotle, each kind of creature tends toward the perfection of its own nature. Thus, for man, the goal--the purpose--of life is to achieve the virtues that constitute happiness.
"As against these theological and philosophical ideas of human destiny, our question may arise from a conviction of the purposelessness of the physical universe as a whole. We look out on the world around us and see nothing but a whirl of atoms in a meaningless void. Whether we see the physical world as chaotic and "chancy" or as an orderly cosmos, human life may still seem meaningless and valueless.
EVENTS
"The pattern of material events is no answer to the questing human heart and mind. All of science remains silent when man asks, 'What am I doing here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the purpose of my life?'
"Many modern thinkers, faced with this urgent and disturbing questions, reject the traditional theological and philosophical views of the purpose and meaning of human life. They assert that men can and must set their own goals, and find meaning in the creation and transformation of their own nature.
"In their view, a man who is truly human must live for some transcendent goal that he sets himself. If he does not do this, he must be engulfed in overwhelming despair at the meaninglessness of life."
'Our next president is Leon Guerrero,
not Kris Aquino or Manny Pacquiao'
"One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective. Election and power are." CAL THOMAS
By Alex P. Vidal
There were predictions that our next president in the future would be Senator Lito Lapid, not Manny Pacquiao, Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada or Kris Aquino.
We don't know how and why. But these predictions came from no less than some groups of municipal mayors and even village officials. Among the so-called mediocre characters in public service today, only Lapid, Manuel Mercado Lapid in real life, has the charisma with the masa.
"People don't care if he did not even finish high school. What matters most is he connects and this is something that other politicians with doctorate degrees and multiple titles don't possess," said a mayor from northern Iloilo who refused to be identified saying he is "still a loyalist of Pareng Erap (Manila Mayor Joseph Ejercito Estrada)."
The municipal mayor said Pacquiao, a congressman from Saranggani, "is only a media creation like other celebrities and showbiz misfits who trespassed the politics" and the highest office they will reach is the senate "never as president of the republic."
CONGRESS
The website of the 16th congress of the Senate of the Philippines described Lapid, 58, "Leon Guerrero" in one of his action films, as "the lowly person of a silver screen hero" who started his political career as vice governor of Pampanga in 1992.
"Never did it occur to the lowly person of a silver screen hero that a man of his mettle would make a mark in the annals of this chamber, a place then forbidding of the not so lettered," stated his biography. "Indeed, as a testament to a working democracy, a person with little formal education can be presented the opportunity of belonging to the group of select individuals mandated by the people to craft policies that would later on become laws and rules of conduct. For this reason, Senator Manuel “Lito” M. Lapid never passed off the chance to deliver well in this world of the erudite."
It added: "The six years of his first term as a senator were marked with achievements which left the cynics perplexed and his critics baffled, but nevertheless proved his worth as a working legislator. He was one of the top performing senators having placed 4th among his peers in the number of bills and resolutions filed in the 14th Congress alone. He fathered one of the meaningful social legislations of the 14th Congress, the Free Legal Assistance Act of 2010 which seeks to ensure that the poor may be afforded free quality legal service. This measure heralded other policy initiatives that look to bridge the great divide between the rich and the poor. Since then, he never wavered on making proposals that would uplift the living standards of the little people of the society whose caused he has been championing, being the "Bida ng Masa".
EXCELLENT
"Consistent with his excellent showing when he was then a neophyte Senator, he did what he could, not to disappoint the more than eleven million Filipino voters who granted him a fresh mandate in the 2010 National Elections. At the close of the 15th Congress, Senator Lapid filed 239 measures earning him the distinction as the fifth most prolific members of the Upper Chamber. He authored the Meat Labeling Act of 2011, Comprehensive Unilateral Hearing Loss Research and Development and Rehabilitation Act, Urban Agriculture and Vertical Farming Act, Corporate Social Responsibility Act, Kindergarten Education Act, and the Adopt-A-Wildlife Species Act, among others. As the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Games, Amusement and Sports, he saw to it that measures are in motion to sufficiently ensure the development of sports in the grassroots, seeing to it that the youth develop a keen interest on participation to sports competition.
COORDINATION
"He looks forward to further coordination between concerned government agencies so that appropriate support is afforded to the national sports development program. In his first year at the helm of the Senate Committee on Tourism, he has initiated initiatives to oversee the development of the tourism potential of the country and gather the tools to ensure the country’s success as it joins the tourism race with our Asian neighbors.
"With the aid of the people who believe in him and share the causes he seeks to uphold, Senator Lapid has proved that he is one who cannot easily be dismissed. Despite the unfair imputations against his competence, he has successfully struggled towards becoming one of the more productive legislators, slowly dispelling one criticism after another to distinguish himself as a dependable leader, a scholar of worthwhile ideals, a gentleman for the masses and a warrior for social responsibility."
