opinion School In Session

THINK A MINUTE

JHAN TIAFAU HURST president of the United States, actually started as a lawyer, which helped prepare him for his exceptionally wise and diplomatic leadership that kept the States of America united through its terribly divisive and devastating Civil War.

Clarence Darrow became possibly the most famous lawyer of all, particularly for his case of the Scopes or socalled Monkey trial of 1925.

Of these seven successful and famous lawyers, which one do you think was the law school dropout? It was Clarence Darrow: the one name which is so often associated with the practice of law. Clarence Darrow attended law school for only one year and then dropped out to study law on his own. But what is more

The national interest and priority of the nation is economic development and prosperity, uplifting the growing number of poor in the country and the declining material well-being of the shrinking middle class. Even the survey commissioned by the Stratbase by Pulse Asia show in 16 categories inflation and top economic issues are the top concerns and external security only the 15th.

In any war the economic and industrial capacity and relative standing of a nation is the ultimate basis for winning in any war, and the Philippines which no longer has a major steel industry and needs to import its basic food, fuel and fertilizers needs is far from having any capability to shift meager resources to raising budgets to devote to the armaments procurement.

Although PBBM went to Davos to drum up investments from the global financial oligarchy he did not succumb to their unsavory importuning for tension in the world. It was a great response to question about the Ukraine War to which PBBM replied that

These answers bring out the real PBBM that some of his subordinates in the Cabinet have tended to derail and even contradict and misrepresent, such as the former DND OIC Jose C. Faustino who made several very pro-US statements before. Faustino, thankfully has been replaced by Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., the super manager of the InterAgency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Secretary Galvez also has a very good track record of working with the Chinese government’s representatives such as Ambassador Huang Xilian, successfully negotiating 5 million doses of Chinese vaccine donations and over 50 million doses of vaccine purchases at “global public goods” costs. Galvez was also head of the OPAPRU on the peace process for the insurgency.

PBBM was in Davos to seek support from the global financial giants but there is global criticism of WEF coming from such anti-poverty global movement like Oxfam (Oxford Committee for Famine Relief) which had an FB post showing 9 Philippine billionaires having $28.9-billion wealth and more than 55 million

Filipinos combined –and getting richer as the 110-million Filipinos get poorer.

PBBM did not create the problem but is expected to solve this wealth disparity crisis. It’s not clear that Davos can provide solutions like the solutions from PBBM’s China state visit that provides a firm foundation for Philippine economic recovery and realize its dream of being an uppermiddle income economy with per capital income of US$ 4,256 from today’s US$ 3,763.70.

PBBM is now expressing himself more spontaneously and speaking with more authenticity, bringing out his convictions. We like to see him do more of this and hope the lower echelons start picking up and echoing his message instead of sending out disparate, confusing and often conflicting messages to that of the President of the Republic.