Susan’s Notes
By Susan Palmes-Dennis
ROCKINGHAM, North Carolina—A teacher named Jenelyn Amante who’s from Cagayan de Oro City reposted a sad but telling account of another Filipino teacher who doesn’t want to come home to the country.
I met Jenelyn in North Carolina and the repost she shared came from another Filipino teacher who worked in the US under the J-1 Visa program which allows them to work in the US for five years. In that post, the unnamed teacher told fellow J-1 teachers that her tenure is about to end next year but she doesn’t want to go back to the Philippines.
The reasons she enumerated for refusing to come home are manifold and all-too-common: the country’s lousy economy which meant that the salaries of teachers are still the same and the corruption in government as evidenced by the ongoing Senate turf wars, the looming impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio and the flood control project scandal.
The post ended with the teacher saying she and her family wanted to go cross country to find a permanent home, not in the Philippines and she asked for any suggestions from her fellow peers including Jenelyn shared the teacher’s sentiment as she bewailed the challenges she and her fellow J-1 teachers face once their time in the US is up. And I can only commiserate with their plight.
Her sentiments are unsurprising, though no less heartbreaking but as a fellow Kagay-anon now transplanted here in the US, I’m resigned to the fact that the it may take several generations before we can see any semblance of a better quality of life in the Philippines. I consider myself blessed that I managed to relocate here and while we’re not rich, we can afford basic creature comforts especially in our old age.
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I am also concerned of course with the future of my remaining family living in the Philippines, specifically in Cagayan de Oro City. I wonder what kind of future my grandchildren will have especially that we have leaders more concerned with enriching and entrenching themselves in power without any thought or concern over the welfare of their constituents.
Do they even have any sense of accountability or conscience over the consequences of their actions? I’m referring to fugitive Sen. Rogelio ‘Bato’ dela Rosa, who wasn’t man enough to face the arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) or ousted former Senate president Alan Peter Cayetano who was reduced to making Facebook live posts and joining a bogus hearing on the 18 ex-Marines.
As I write this, the Senate blue ribbon committee chaired by Sen. Erwin Tulfo will invite back the 18 ex-Marines who made testimonials about the so-called ‘maletas’ (suitcases) filled with bribe money given to some elected officials—some of whom weren’t even elected or had yet to be elected at the time like Sen. Tito Sotto—when they were supposedly given the money.
The plotholes in their testimonials notwithstanding, it’s appalling to note the reports that the 18 ex-Marines were supposedly given P5 million each by a former congressman in order to spin their fantastical, patently false testimonies to the public as orchestrated by the Cayetano bloc. And we don’t know for certain how that bloc will hold now that Cayetano was ousted from the Senate presidency.
There were only five senators of the Cayetano bloc who attended the highly questionable hearing on the 18 ex-Marines—Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, his sister Pia Cayetano, Imee Marcos, Rodante Marcoleta and Robinhood Padilla—and noticeably absent were the two Villar siblings, Sen. Joel Villanueva and Sen. Bong Go. It takes 16 votes to impeach the Vice President but the road to impeachment is a very long and arduous one.
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Which brings us back, however unrelated, to Jenelyn’s plight. If we recall, the late president Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino mentioned in one of his state of the nation addresses that the government should work to create more jobs so that overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) can come home. And even former president Rodrigo Duterte promised to create an overseas workers bank that would fund the livelihood of returning workers.
And I also wonder what happened to the so-called ‘Maharlika Fund’ promised by President Bongbong Marcos that is seen as an engine of economic growth? Nothing so far and I highly doubt it would serve that purpose. If anything that ‘Maharlika Fund’ would be another source of corruption similar to the flood control projects.
And while we hear of reports that the Palace is open to a special session of Congress in order to move up the scheduled date of the impeachment trial earlier than the July 6 calendar set by Cayetano before he was unceremoniously ousted, there is still the pre-trial conference to be dealt with. Between now and July 6, anything can happen.
I still hold on to the belief that the impeachment trial against Vice President Sara Duterte should not be held because it has polarized the country politically enough. And to what end would impeaching her would achieve other than dividing the country even further? But the wheels are already churning and the machinery is in place and time is not on the side of the Dutertes.Instead of rebuilding our economy, we’re wasting our time with this political exercise that won’t solve all of our problems overnight nor put any food on our tables. Still, if the impeachment trial does push through, let us get this over and done with. But it won’t guarantee a better, brighter tomorrow for the Filipino people. And that’s why teachers like Jenelyn cannot go home. Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
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