Well if our lady president cares to make a meaningful gesture, she can start the Year of the Ox by making an example of Secretary Nasser Pangandaman in the wake of the widely reported display of thuggery by the official in question, ‘ably assisted’ by his namesake, Nasser, Jr.

The mauling of a 14 year-old allegedly by the father and son at Antipolo’s Valley Golf and Counry Club, in full view of other golfers, surely merits summary action without prejudice to criminal charges being filed by the victim.

The sacking of the agrarian reform chief presents a conundrum for GMA we are sure given how Pangandaman is the only Muslim in her Cabinet, not to mention geing her alter-ego in the checkered implementation of the 20-year-long comprehensive agrarian reform program.

GMA can actually hit two birds with the proverbial single stone here by getting rid of a thug while also finding a better administrator for DAR, and CARP.

It’s another story but if people care to look more closely at how CARP has been run, they will find that the billions spent have mainly gone to buying up land and distributing them but without adequate resources allocated for support services for farmer beneficiaries who are left to ‘manage’ disaggregated land holdings without proper training and at the mercy of usurious financiers.

The farmer beneficiaries mostly end up mortgaging their land and becoming lowly paid laborers all over again with the rest of CARP funds each year going to the huge and inefficient DAR bureaucracy

Update:

On ABS-CBN radio today one report quoted Sec. Pangandaman as saying he himself was not involved in the maulng incident, that they were the ones provoked and that they themselves may sue the Dela Paz’s.

Big deal really and even granting the elder Pangandaman himself did not join in the melee he could be charged as principal co-accused by inducement.

Let’s see where this goes.