SIGNS are Sen. Edgardo Angara’s passion for licking the problem of children malnutrion in the country would soon bear fruit, actually vegetables, please excuse the metaphor.

Last month, veteran lawyer-educator-legislator Angara launched his Oh My Gulay campaign, a bid to put more vegetables in our children’s, if you will, grandchildren’s daily fare.

You know, if not outright greens on the plate, veggie-laced cookies, crackers, burger buns, and the like for the hungry school kids on recess.

Also dubbed OMG, it’s a multi-sectoral effort that the senator is banking on to engage teachers and school children in the planting, caring, and harvesting of vegetables on campus or in their backyards.

Initially, the amiable Senador Edong tapped and obtained full support from the Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Science and Technology.

However, it didn’t take long for the private sector to see the urgency of the OMG advocacy. Survey and clinical reports have surfaced to call attention to the fact that malnourished children tend to be both physically and mentally weak, susceptible to infection and diseases and, generally, hard put to cope with school work.

In the course of the OMG gospel propagation, as it were, infomercials have been released to the media – featuring celebrities, including Anne Curtis, Sarah Geronimo, and Mark Bautista.    

Cost of primetime placements on ABS-CBN regional TV shows are being shouldered by East West Seed Co. ABS-CBN, for its part, has given the OMG liberal discounts. Not to be outdone, GMA Network (Channel 7 and QTV-11), ABC TV, and Solar TV accommodate OMG placements, gratis et amore.

Many companies and business groups have come on board the OMG bandwagon, that is to say, adopting schools and funding requirements for planting, growing, and harvesting vegetables in public schools all over the country.

Among the corporate foster parents are Megaworld, San Miguel Corp., Aboitiz Corp., University of the East, Apayao State College, Europharma STI, Zesto Corp. and the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce.

By the first quarter of the coming school year that opens in June, all the OMG stakeholders, notably Senador Edong, should be seeing more school-children eating more vegetables for the development of their young bodies and brains.

Alright, Jose, now you know the veggie man with the greenest thumb in the country.

Ping confused

Sen. Panfilo Lacson is flabbergasted.

“Bakit sabi ng Secretary of Justice may warrant pa rin. Warrant for what? Warrant for a nullified or dismissed case?”

The good senator, a non-lawyer lawmaker, might have answered himself.     “Yan ang system natin sa Pilipinas. And there’s a hierarchy of courts, lower courts, and then paakyat yan CA and Supreme Court.”

Then again, even if Ping might have responded to himself, indeed, he apparently did not know that he had. Otherwise, he should have at once allowed that the “warrant for a nullified or dismissed case” by the Court of Appeals could happen to be appellable or open to challenge before the Supreme Court.

Recounting his more than one year as fugitive presumably abroad, the senator intimated that through it all, “I kept my head down.”

There’s probably something about having keep docking to avoid identification that could affect logical thinking.