Platform it is (Sabong News)

Excerpts culled from a replay of “The Chat Room” on PTV, with UniTeam candidate BBM replying to questions by Communication Secretary Martin Andanar and Erwin Tulfo. “Food sovereignty.” Plant enough to produce our own supply to keep prices steady. Learn from countries like Vietnam, which stopped exporting rice during the pandemic. “Less politics, more merit.” High mortality rates in hospitals are due to the distance between public hospitals and regional hospitals. “Fully 80 percent of big-hospital services – childbearing, asthma, colds, fractures – can be handled by Rural Health Units. We just need more of them.” Plus, how to keep our doctors and nurses? “Back to basics.” Agriculture, power, infrastructure, education. “It takes three to five years to build a plant, any plant.” “Does the state have the moral authority to take a life? Is it a deterrent? Most studies say it is not. Law enforcement is more important.” “No cold war” any longer. Not China or US but China and US. “There’s no other approach to the WPS issue but engagement. Our geographical location” is both a blessing and a weakness. “No quickie divorces.” “Corruption is not a Filipino condition, it is a human condition.” Streamline public services. No more fixers. Leadership must set example. “Fix the bureaucracy for ease of doing business.” The bureaucracy needs workers who “work smart.” On drugs. 1. Prevention (education at home, in school). 2. Rehab, “think of addiction as a disease.” 3. Enforcement, run after the kingpins, not only the “small-timers.” Barbs thrown at him. “That’s natural, to be expected… I’ve been answering the same questions for 30 years. Their opinions have not changed, my answers have not changed… The people must hear (a different message) now that we are in crisis.” “Partisan, personalan, us-and-them discussions. (But) our appeal for unity is reverberating.” “Never assume (victory based on surveys). Those aren’t votes, they’re just numbers.” “Synergy… Build Build Build provides the bones for government, the flesh is provided by the private sector.” “Add ‘digital’ as the first word to infrastructure.” It’s a different world now, “the real world and cyberspace.” EL-CAC and the program to bring rebels back to the fold. “How can you reject a program that brings peace?”