Lucas Bersamin: a pro-victim CJ

The 25th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Lucas Bersamin, is bound to demonstrate a strong bias in favor of victims. Our sense is, the new Chief Justice is likely to have a forceful bearing against violent crime and great compassion for victims, considering that his own family suffered a brutal killing. Bersamin’s older brother, the late Abra congressman Luis Bersamin, was shot in the head at the Mt. Carmel Church compound in Quezon City after attending the wedding of his niece on Dec. 16, 2006.

Once you’ve been a victim yourself, you tend to have immense sympathy for other victims.

Citing political rivalry as the motive, a Quezon City Regional Trial Court on Sept. 30, 2015 found former Abra governor Vicente Valera and two accomplices guilty of double murder for the killing of the older Bersamin and his security aide, SPO1 Adelfo Ortega. Valera and his co-conspirators were meted out two 20 to 40-year prison terms.

Before he was assassinated, the older Bersamin had declared his plans to run against Valera, then the incumbent governor, in the 2007 elections.--Harry Roque, former residential spokesperson

Filipino and Panitikan subjects

The Supreme Court on Oct. 9 to affirmed the landmark education reform of the current century, Republic Act 10533 (Enhanced Basic Education Curriculum Act) or known as the K-12 program.

The ruling included the petition from several Filipino and Panitikan teachers who decried the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) order to remove Filipino and Panitikan from core subjects in every tertiary institutions’ curriculums.

The argument of those who decried CHED’s order is that Filipino tertiary graduates will lose their grasp at learning “our own” culture.

This is absurd because currently Filipino or Tagalog is a core part of the curriculum and Filipino children from ages 5 to 18, studying in public or private and sectarian or secular schools have to study Filipino grammar and literature until they graduate at the basic education phase.

The petitioners should examine their pedagogical methods in order to entice everyone to learn what they consider as “Filipino” language and literature.

Another argument is that there will be at least 10,000 Filipino and Panitikan teachers who will lose their jobs at the tertiary level. They will have to be demoted to the Senior High. This is selfish.

We should not let our educational system be stuck in the dinosaur age just because certain “groups” like these Filipino and Panitikan teachers will lose their jobs.--Joseph Solis Alcayde

Military men as traffic enforcers

I am a retired Army man and the sight of military men with their long firearms imposing traffic rules is jarring.

If we want combat-trained units to impose traffic, why not use the special action forces of the police? Use the military for national secretary purposes.--Carlos Marcelino of Cebu City