Here's an interesting piece on Sen. Richard Gordon from the
Philippine Daily Inquirer.
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During a debate on the Manila campus of De La Salle University
, Sen. Richard Gordon waves a thin black and white contraption roughly the size of a notebook. “Kindle,” he shouts.
“Here’s a little computer where you can put the entire school curriculum, from Grade 1 to high school to college. Every kid in public school should have one because he who reads, leads,” Gordon exclaimed.
Gordon talked about providing the country’s 17 million public school students with the Amazon.com product and raising the quality of education in the process.
“The government purchases textbooks for public schools. Oftentimes, these books are full of errors. That’s why we have book scams left and right. Why not get a Kindle for every student, download the accurate, factual books needed for the year, do the same every year. So every school year, we just buy new Kindles for the incoming Grade 1,” he explained.
Gordon later admits the plan is simplistic but doable.
Gordon tells reporters that a P0.50 tax on every text message could fund this e-book project.
If there are 2 billion text messages sent every day, he says, that could raise P365 billion annually, enough to buy a $100 Kindle made in China for each pupil and even raise teachers’ monthly salaries to P40,000 from P12,000.
“Our education is now on the level of Zambia and Tanzania. Education should not be a choice. Poverty is the absence of choice,” the senator says.
Gordon, who is running for president in the May 10 election under his newly formed Bagumbayan-Volunteers for a New Philippines Party, fancies himself a “transformer,” pointing to his record as a no-nonsense mayor of Olongapo City.
In the early 1990’s, Gordon captured the country’s attention when he elevated Olongapo from a honky-tonk town hosting American servicemen at the then US Subic Bay Naval Base to one of the country’s more progressive cities.
Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991 devastated Olongapo and hastened US troop departure from the base following the Senate’s rejection of the extension of the Philippines’ bases treaty with the United States.
Rather than grieve, Gordon reinvented himself as chair and administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA) and became the most prominent salesman of the former naval base as a trade and investment hub.
With its duty-free shops and the first class facilities in the base that was previously off limits to Filipinos, Subic became a prime domestic tourist destination. Olongapo was swept in the boom.
Gordon sought to instill discipline among his constituents, plastering signs all over the city declaring that “bawal ang tamad sa Olongapo,” or laziness is not allowed.
“Everything I did in Olongapo was a reaction to colonial culture. We have Juan Tamad who is a bad role model,” says Gordon, who served as mayor for a dozen years.
Gordon boasts that Olongapo was the first city to have tricycle drivers wearing uniforms.
Public utility vehicles were color-coded long before the scheme was adopted in Metro Manila to ease traffic jams.
But Gordon also had another reason for the project. When his father James L. Gordon, Olongapo’s founding father and its first mayor, was assassinated in 1967, the attackers escaped using tricycles. He figured that public vehicles and drivers should be identified easily.
In 1998, Felicito Payumo replaced Gordon as SBMA chief. Pundits trace a reason that went all the way back to 1992, the election year after the Senate’s rejection of the US Bases Treaty.
Posters showing the faces of the so-called “Magnificent 12” senators who voted for the rejection of the treaty were hoisted around Olongapo. People were told not to vote for them.
The urban legend goes that when Sen. Joseph Estrada, one of the Magnificent 12, became president six years later, he appointed Payumo to the SBMA to get back at Gordon.
Besides, Gordon was perceived to be more sympathetic to the Americans, a detail that could hurt the newly elected Estrada’s pro-poor image.
Asked if he considers himself a nationalist, Gordon was quick to respond: “Why shouldn’t I be?”
Gordon grew up in an Olongapo with a hovering American presence. “The bases were rammed down our throats,” he said.
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Read the rest at the
Philippine Daily Inquirer.
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