ORMOC CITY– A man with multiple gunshot wounds, discovered along a national road in Barangay Lipanto, Saint Bernard, Southern Leyte, died while receiving medical attention late Tuesday evening, October 1.
Residents found the unidentified man around 10:30 pm, wearing a white t-shirt and black jogger pants, and immediately reported the incident to local authorities.
The barangay chairman of Lipanto alerted the police, prompting a response led by Chief of Police Major Aldous Dexter Roa.
Upon arriving at the scene, officers found the victim’s hands bound with a charger cord, and his mouth wrapped in a mask, which was reportedly removed by the first responders.
The man had sustained gunshot wounds to his stomach and back, and although he appeared lifeless, first responders noted that he was still conscious upon their arrival.
In his final moments, the victim managed to speak in the local dialect, “I am from San Jose, Sogod. I was shot and thrown from a van. I am tired.”
Dr. Karen Villanueva, rural health unit officer of Saint Bernard, was called to the scene to provide medical assistance, but despite efforts to save him, the victim was pronounced dead.
The Scene of the Crime Operatives (SOCO) from the Southern Leyte Provincial Forensic Unit have been requested to process the crime scene.
Meanwhile, the Saint Bernard Municipal Police Station has launched an in-depth investigation and is coordinating with nearby police stations for a dragnet operation aimed at identifying and apprehending the suspects responsible for the crime.
TACLOBAN CITY– A group of young leaders in Eastern Samar is pushing former Guiuan mayor, Christopher Sheen Gonzales, to run for the province’s lone congressional district for the forthcoming elections.
This call of the young leaders came amid the decision of Rep. Marcelino ‘Nonoy’ Libanan of the 4Ps party-list group to drop on the congressional race.
He was supposed to square with reelectionist Rep. Maria Fe Abunda who is seeking for her third and last term.
Joshua Caspe Aserit, a young student leader from Eastern Samar, has taken to social media to voice his disappointment over Libanan’s decision.
Aserit, who holds various leadership roles including president of the San Francisco Youth Organization and vice president of the Eastern Samar State University (ESSU) Federated Student Council, expressed his frustration, stating that Libanan’s withdrawal is a setback for the province.
“The decision of Cong. Nonoy Libanan to withdraw from running as the congressional district representative of Eastern Samar, following a recent meeting with House Speaker Romualdez, is shocking and unfortunate for the people of Eastern Samar,” Aserit said.
“As someone who supports the Movement of Caring Leaders and Builders of a Progressive Eastern Samar, it’s disheartening to see this decision after all that Congressman Libanan has achieved in the last three years. In contrast, the current leadership has failed to implement significant projects or initiatives over the past six years. I believe this choice is a step backward.”
To further this cause, Aserit has launched a petition urging former vice governor Gonzales to run for the congressional seat.
He has been actively promoting this call on social media, encouraging others to support Gonzales as a candidate who can lead Eastern Samar towards meaningful change.
Gonzales is a son-in-law of Rep. Libanan. (LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA)
As we celebrate Teachers’ Day in both private and government institutions, there is an underlying issue that often goes unaddressed: the disparity in how teachers are treated, appreciated, and supported in these sectors. While government teachers enjoy national recognition, job security, and standardized benefits, many private school teachers struggle with job precarity, lower salaries, and less visibility. The imbalance needs to be confronted for fairness and the future of education in the country.
Government teachers are undeniably the backbone of our public education system. They benefit from state-sponsored recognition, salary adjustments, and additional perks like tenure. Public institutions usually host grand celebrations during Teachers’ Day, with government officials lauding their dedication. This system of support allows them to continue serving despite the challenges of overcrowded classrooms, limited resources, and bureaucratic red tape. However, the robust backing they receive highlights the gap between their experience and that of private school teachers.
Private school teachers, on the other hand, often face more challenges with less support. While they also dedicate themselves to the education of our youth, many do so under more financially constrained conditions, with lower wages and less job security. Teachers’ Day is celebrated in these institutions, but the recognition often remains limited within the school itself. The sacrifices of these educators, who are crucial to the success of the private sector, deserve more visibility and acknowledgment on a national scale.
The issue at hand is not just about celebrating Teachers’ Day but about the systemic inequalities that exist between the two sectors. We must ask ourselves: how can we, as a society, claim to value education when the teachers in one sector are left behind? This disparity is not just an issue of pay but one of respect and validation. We need to elevate private school teachers to the same level of acknowledgment as their counterparts in government institutions.
Moving forward, the government and the public must work toward bridging this gap. Teachers’ Day should not only be about festivities; it should be a time to reflect on what more can be done for all educators. The government, through policies and recognition programs, must ensure that private school teachers receive similar benefits and protections. We need to create a more equitable environment where all teachers, regardless of where they work, are equally celebrated and supported in their noble profession.
Local choreographers find this trend bothersome that local festivals are being choreographed by hired professionals from other regions, who bring in steps, props, and influences that don’t belong to our culture. This practice strips the festivals of their original essence, turning what should be authentic expressions of our heritage into performances with a foreign flavor. While some may argue that these changes enhance the spectacle, I believe they dilute the true cultural significance of these events.
When one attends a local festival, one expects to experience something deeply rooted in one’s traditions. The colors, dances, and rituals should reflect the history and stories of one’s ancestors. But with the increasing influence of choreographers from outside the community, we see more and more elements that feel alien to our own heritage. These choreographers may be talented, but they often introduce modern, flashy routines and props that feel disconnected from the festival’s original meaning. It’s disheartening to watch a festival that used to celebrate our roots morph into something that feels more like a generic, commercial production.
I understand that festivals evolve. But there’s a fine line between evolution and erosion. When choreographers bring in elements that are foreign to our culture, they risk erasing the very traditions the festivals are meant to preserve. We’ve seen this happen in our own locality, where once-familiar dances now include steps that are completely foreign to us. The result is a festival that looks impressive but feels hollow as if the soul of the event has been lost in favor of entertainment value.
One of the issues, I think, is that some local officials or organizers feel pressured to make the festivals more visually exciting to attract larger audiences, especially tourists. They believe that hiring professional choreographers will help achieve that. While we appreciate the effort to put our local events on the map, I feel like we’re losing sight of what matters: staying true to our culture. Festivals are not just performances; they are a celebration of our identity, and when we compromise that for spectacle, we lose something far more valuable.
We also wonder if the younger generation, growing up with these “new and improved” festivals, will even know what the original traditions looked like. When we were younger, we remember watching the elders lead the dances and rituals, and there was something sacred about it. Now, with these choreographed performances, we fear that future generations will have no memory of the authentic steps, songs, and traditions that were passed down through centuries.
Of course, I’m not saying we shouldn’t evolve or make our festivals appealing to a wider audience. But there has to be a balance. We can incorporate modern elements without losing the core of what makes the festival ours. The solution lies in involving local cultural experts or elders in the planning process. They can work with choreographers to ensure that the integrity of the festival is maintained, even as we look for ways to keep the event fresh and engaging.
We also need to educate ourselves and others about the importance of cultural preservation. It’s not enough to celebrate these festivals once a year; we need to understand the stories behind them and pass that knowledge down to the next generation. If we allow outsiders to define what our festivals should look like, we risk losing a crucial part of our identity.
While hiring outside choreographers may add flair to local festivals, we mustn’t lose sight of their original purpose. Our festivals are more than just entertainment—they are living expressions of our heritage. We should involve more local experts, prioritize authenticity over spectacle, and educate future generations about the importance of preserving our traditions. We need to ensure that our festivals remain true to their roots while still being relevant to today’s world.
“WHAT therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mk 10,9)
That, in a nutshell, is how God created and designed marriage for us. It’s a lifelong, unbreakable commitment that is founded on God’s love and on our faith in him. Marriage is never just our own invention that would depend on how things go nor on the terms we set for it. Marriage should be entered into according to God’s designs for it, according to his terms, and not ours.
Thus, in the wedding ceremony, the man and the woman, armed by God’s grace, promise each other that they will stick together “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
As designed by God, marriage is for a man and a woman who in their God-based love for each other make themselves one flesh. Being a God-based love, it has to go beyond the human level of love. It has to be a love that is supernatural as shown to us and shared with us by Christ.
This God-based love will definitely be quite a tall order for us, since we are expected to go beyond our human and natural powers and resources. But as long as our faith in God is deep and strong, we can hack it, because more than us it is God himself who will enable us to love as God loves as shown to us by Christ. This God-based love can handle anything in our life.
Given the confusion and errors now besetting this issue on marriage, we need to reiterate that marriage is meant only for a man and a woman. There’s no such thing as same-sex marriage. Why? Because marriage is meant primarily for procreation of children.
And it has be exclusive—that is, between one man and one woman. It cannot be polygamous. Why? Because marriage is based on a love that involves the use of the body.
Since in love, everything is supposed to be given to the beloved by the lover, once that body is given to the beloved, it cannot anymore be shared with another partner. Unlike in a love that is spiritual, the more people we love, the better.
But more important to realize about marriage is that it is actually a path to holiness. It is not just a purely human and temporal affair. It has great potentials for the parties involved to pursue the common goal of ours to attain holiness, our identification with God through Christ, since we are all God’s image and likeness.
That is why everything has to be done to make marriage achieve its fullest dignity. And that means that we have to purify and elevate the love that is the very germ of marriage to the supernatural order as it should be.
That love has to develop from simply being natural and body-emotion-world reliant to being more and more spiritual and supernatural, driven by grace rather than by mere natural forces.
With the sacrament of marriage, the love between husband and wife is already guaranteed to have all the graces needed to make that marriage reach its fullness. What is needed is the faithful and generous correspondence of the parties concerned to those graces.
The parties involved should realize that their love for each other should reflect and channel the very love Christ has for the Church. Yes, the union of husband and wife should be like that of Christ toward the Church. (cfr. Eph 5,22-33)
CLEMELLE L. MONTALLANA,DM, CESE
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR III
CLEMELLE L. MONTALLANA,DM, CESE ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR III
Teachers as originators of Public Good must be celebrated and be given its rightful respect , it gives justice to their efforts and breath admiration to their vocation.
Public Good is a term in Economics that mean individuals can benefit from the goods without directly paying for it. Technically, its Non-Excludable (No one can be excluded from using the good. For example, once a public park is created, anyone can use it without being prevented from doing so.) and Non-Rivalrous (One person’s use of the good does not reduce its availability to others. For instance, one person enjoying the benefits of clean air does not diminish the amount of clean air available for others.) .
Teachers themselves are not public goods in the strict economic sense, but the services they provide—education—can be considered a public good.
In the UNESCO official website there lies a Working Paper that revisits Education as Public Good, The 17th Working Paper on the challenges facing education has been published. This latest paper re-examines the principle of education as a public good in the current context in which education is being increasingly privatized and commodified.
Education has been considered a human right and a public good in global public policy at least since 1945. This conceptualization has been produced and advanced by international organizations ever since, particularly by UN agencies and, among these, UNESCO. However, the educational landscape has changed considerably since then and it is now characterized by an increasing involvement of non-state actors, including for-profit organizations.
Education as a public good is essential for several reasons:
1. Equal Opportunity: Public education ensures that all individuals, regardless of their socio-economic background, have access to learning opportunities. This helps level the playing field and allows everyone to reach their potential.
2. Economic Growth: An educated population is crucial for economic development. Education equips individuals with the skills and knowledge needed to participate effectively in the workforce, driving innovation and productivity.
3. Social Mobility: Education provides a pathway for individuals to improve their socio-economic status. It opens doors to better job opportunities and higher incomes, helping to reduce poverty and inequality.
These are just to name a few, By ensuring that education is accessible to all, societies can build a more equitable, prosperous, and stable future.
Teachers as originators of Public Good must be celebrated and be given its rightful respect, it gives justice to their efforts and breath admiration to their vocation.
