by Tita C. Valderama
WE MAY have heard enough toilet humor and rumors. Now it’s about time to get serious about a simple toilet habit that can save people from many health risks: washing hands.
Health and sanitation experts say this basic hygiene practice after a pee or poo can keep one away from several diseases, diarrhea and worm infections being among the most common and fatal.
Sidebar
by Isa Lorenzo
AS POLITICS gains ground in the bureaucracy, the government starts to lose a few good men and women with career-service eligibility.
When Juan Miguel Luz was first offered a position in the fledgling Aquino government, he refused. But after a series of failed coups, he decided to join, along with others from the so-called middle forces, to help secure democratic institutions.
by Isa Lorenzo and Malou Mangahas
PRESIDENT GLORIA Macapagal Arroyo herself gives the lie to her administration’s avowed efforts to trim the bureaucracy of excess personnel.
A 2008 study by the Civil Service Commission lists Arroyo’s office as the agency with the biggest number of undersecretaries, assistant secretaries, advisers, assistants and consultants in excess of caps set in law, and without civil service eligibility.
What to do with these Arroyo appointees is the acid test that Ricardo Lirag Saludo must hurdle in his new post as CSC chairman with a fixed seven-year tenure.
When politics pollute civil service
by Isa Lorenzo and Malou Mangahas
THE RECENT nomination of Ricardo Lirag Saludo as chairperson of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) effectively signals the capture by political appointees of managerial positions in the bureaucracy that had previously been reserved to career service personnel.
A rabid defender and loyal functionary of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Saludo joined the government service in March 2001 as a political appointee and over the last seven years opted against securing career service eligibility.
by Leonor Magtolis Briones
For the last several months we have been swimming in an alphabet soup of acronyms — NBN, ZTE, NEDA, FG, FGI, to name a few. And more keep pouring in; these days, the most oft-repeated one is NFA, or the National Food Authority. Yet what we should have been repeating like a mantra is MDG and its plural form, which stands for Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, the Philippines became one of the signatories to the Millennium Declaration, thereby sealing its commitment to meeting by 2015 eight goals that address development concerns worldwide. Last year marked the midpoint in the period allotted to the achievement of these MDGs.
THIS early, some politicians are already gearing up for 2010. But there’s another year that’s worth keeping in mind: 2015, which is the deadline for countries that signed the Millennium Declaration to meet the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs.
Sidebar
by Isa Lorenzo
HOW MUCH is a song worth? It may be impossible to quantify the pleasure that hearing a song produces. But composers agree that they should be compensated every time a song they wrote is used.
Under the Intellectual Property (IP) code, copyright of a musical work is acquired and exists from the moment of its creation. The creator owns the composition, and is vested with the copyright, a bundle of exclusive economic rights that covers the reproduction, adaptation, distribution, rental, display, performance, and other communication of the work to the public.
by Prime Sarmiento
JAL TAGUIBAO has a very simple way of telling just when a song can be called a hit. “When your song is being played in jeepneys,” he says, “that’s when it’s gone big time.
Taguibao should know. As the bass player of the popular pop-rock trio Sugarfree, he has shared in the success of chart-toppers such as “Mariposa (Butterfly),” “Telepono (Telephone),” and “Hari ng Sablay (King of Mishaps).” His five-year-old band has sold thousands of CDs, with its second venture, the album “Dramachine,” even turning gold.
Perspective
by Nepomuceno Malaluan
THREE QUESTIONS would be left unanswered should the Supreme Court refuse to budge on its March 25, 2008 ruling in the Neri v. Senate Committee case. Equally — if not more — important, however, is the final decision’s bearing on how the executive and the court would hence be dealing with questions involving presidential communications in Congressional inquiries. This is why transparency and accountability advocates are hoping that the Supreme Court will reconsider and allow the Senate to compel disclosure over the claim of executive privilege.
by Prime Sarmiento
SHE HAS always loved to sing, and as a young girl even joined amateur contests held in her hometown of Mainit in Surigao del Norte. Now based in Los Baños, Laguna, Christine Ajoc hasn’t foregone the joys of singing to an audience, even if she has not become a professional singer. If the 25-year-old is not in a videoke bar where she and her friends feast on crispy pata and take turns singing songs by Rivermaya or Christina Aguilera, Ajoc is singing (and eating and chatting) with the help of a videoke at a friend’s house.
