HERE’S to the Senate for knocking some sense on some of the coconuts at the Land Transportation Office (LTO) led by my tocayo, Alfonso Tan. With Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano leading the way, our senators were able to force LTO’s non-thinkers out of the way to make life easy, finally, for our vehicle owners.
Remember that “no plate, no travel” policy doggedly pursued previously by Tan and his ilk?
It did a lot of damage to hapless motorists, particularly during the Holy Week break, when they could use their our own cars for trips to the country but only under pain of a P10,000 fine.
The reason for that stupendous stupid penalty?
The brand-new cars are without plates—through no fault of owners but of the government inefficiency, if not downright stupidity.
Just because there is a law banning vehicles out of the road if they are plate-less, Tan and his cohorts were sticking to it like leeches gone berserk, unmindful of the harm inflicted mentally on our woeful motorists.
Tan and his subalterns are lucky they are not yet the defendants in a class suit for causing mental anguish and torture arising from their recklessness and indifference to people’s feelings.
They simply refused to listen to simple reason, if not common sense: The law is there but since it does more harm than good in the present context of realities, it can be frozen—as was the correct interpretation of Cayetano from the very start.
The non-availability of car plates was simply the fault of the LTO and never the vehicle owner, who has the Official Receipt Certificate of Registration to prove ownership of the automobile and, yet, he is being forbidden to use it. Such crap.
Why punish the victim and not the other way around, the punisher getting it in the neck instead for his utter disregard of the victim’s latent right to enjoy his private property—the car?
As Cayetano so correctly pointed out: “Why punish the car owner for a fault committed by the government through its failure to deliver the car plates?”
Before Cayetano and his fellow honorable senators torpedoed Tan’s wicked thinking, I pity our motorists victimized by a government that is sworn to protect the welfare of the people. What correct path are we talking about here?
Car plate supplier remiss?
Now this: How true are reports that LTO’s supplier of the new car plates had delivered inferior product and which is allegedly below specifications?
I raise a glass to Sen. Ralph Recto for raising this concern, finally taking up the cudgels of our beleaguered car buffs.
And, to think the LTO did the exceedingly exhaustive process of tapping the Netherlands to manufacture our new car plates, brushing aside Filipino ingenuity that has been consistently at par with the world’s best for so long now.
Recto’s spin put to serious scrutiny the LTO’s continued bragging that the new car plate is tamper-proof and is security-equipped.
In an interview, I remember telling famous broadcaster Ted Failon a while back this: “Why change our car plates when there are other concerns that need more attention than car plates? As the saying goes, ‘If it ain’t broken, why fix it?’”
Seemingly, if there’s money to burn, this government—or P-Noy’s project-oriented men most especially, I guess—will fix everything, including, perhaps, the unsinkable Rizal Monument at Luneta, even if they see just a minor scratch in it.
Only under P-Noy’s watch.
Calax bidding
We should know by now how much was the winning bid for the Cavite Laguna Expressway project from either of the two protagonists—San Miguel Corp. and Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC).
Whatever the amount, the government is the clear winner here while rendering the efforts of SMC’s Ramon S. Ang and MPIC’s Manny V. Pangilinan as surefire blasts to reignite interest in the P-Noy-designed Public-Private-Partnership Program aimed at tapping businessmen to invest in high-profile projects for the good of the people.
With the P20.1-billion minimum bid required that would go to government coffers on top of the toll road’s P35.4-billion construction cost, Mr. Aquino could use the money for more people-oriented projects in a vigorous bid to sustain growth in his administration’s so-called last two minutes.
But, even as the rebidding is now over and the wounds of the canceled first bidding remain fresh in the Ayala-Aboitiz tandem (first winners), the question keeps coming back: Why did MVP decide to bid after initially balking? Did MVP bid to win, or did he just do it for show? If so, what did he hope to accomplish by doing that?
Just asking, Sir.
PEE STOP Best wishes to Steph Asi and Yayay de Castro, both of Top Gear Philippines, who will tie the knot today, May 29…Even as Toyota has now hit the 1-million mark in vehicle sales, the world’s car leader continues to expand, recently inaugurating dealerships in Zamboanga and Roxas City to bring to 47 its number of dealers nationwide. Cheers!… After its successful Mirage run featuring screen celebrities behind the wheels on May 9 from the Quezon City. Memorial Circle and back, Mitsubishi will do it again tomorrow, May 30, starting at SM Moa in Pasay City and back. More power, Froi!
1 comment
“Why change our car plates when there are other concerns that need more attention than car plates?” Very good question and I am sure everybody knows the answer. And you are hoping the president will intervene? My observation of Pinoy is this, he stand by what is right but he also stand by what is wrong. I hope Mar will improve on this.