Language issue...

'Tis the season to be jolly, 'tis the season of beauty pageants, once again. The recently concluded BB Pilippinas 2011 showed that we do have so much potentials. We just have to develop them. 

I am not so much beholden to international  beauty pageants as avenues of showcasing our best and brightest. There are a lot of endeavors that we can focus on, however, I could not also denigrate the importance of these beauty contests. Training a candidate to represent the country is not an easy task. And I think that BB Pilpinas has a lot of things to address in as far as the conduct of the search. 
One of the "major-major" issue that the organizing committee has to resolve is language barrier. I don't know if they have prescribed a strictly "english only policy" in the conduct of the pageant, which to me is very condescending. For me, speaking tagalog is and always will be a struggle. However, why can't we allow those who would rather express themselves in that language way better.  

Last night's pageant had this question which was centered on what would the candidate tell the president, would she write a letter to the president.To everyone's chagrin, here's the answer, if I captured it correctly: "...I would tell the president to listen to the people because the government is the people and the people is the government". And, I appreciated that. Not that I think that the president is not listening to us, "the people", I appreciated that because she has that basic understanding of what democracy is all about. The only thing that could have made that a better answer is to expound that a bit and say it in a language that she is most comfortable of.

A classic definition of democracy was given by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address: "government of the people, for the people and by the people". Abe Lincoln was speaking American English, his native tongue. He couldn't have said it better than that.


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Copyright © 2011 by Leonel Agir


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