Presidential Adviser on Cooperatives and incoming Agrarian Reform Secretary Roberto M. Pagdanganan today lauded cooperatives for pooling resources and adopting a program that would further develop cooperativism in the country.

Pagdanganan said the Cooperative Centralized Financial System (CCFS), which conducted its founding members forum in Malacaņang today, clearly defined the cooperative sector’s partnership with the government in pushing national growth.

He stressed that the program was in line with the priority agenda of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to strengthen the economy by stimulating cooperatives and small and medium enterprises.

Pagdanganan said the CCFS, a banner program administered by the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP), would go a long way in enhancing the management of information, strengthening the capital base and enforcing performance standards and good governance among cooperatives.

The CCFS, he added, would ensure the full development and sustained growth of cooperatives throughout the country.

Senate President Franklin Drilon today deplored the use of the Senate by former President Joseph Estrada to hit the Macapagal-Arroyo administration in yesterday’s hearing at the Senate.

In a statement, Drilon said that the former president took every opportunity to take potshots at President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and even labored the Senate committees on his "tales of woes" while under detention at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC).

"It is deplorable that Mr. Estrada used yesterday’s public hearing as his forum to sling mud at the Arroyo administration," Drilon said.

Apparently, Drilon said, Estrada refused to heed the call of the President for unity to help rebuild the state of the country’s economy. "He is forgetting the plight of the masses he claims he is championing," Drilon said.

According to Drilon, despite the attempts by his drumbeaters to hype-up his appearance in yesterday’s Senate inquiry, the former president merely testified on matters that are already of record.

Drilon said that Estrada’s claims that there is a sovereign guarantee in the contracts for the Caliraya-Botokan-Kalayaan (CBK) power project is merely an expression of opinion that the former president may or may not be competent to testify on.

On Tuesday, both Acting Justice Secretary Merceditas Gutierrez and Energy Secretary Vincent Perez stressed that there was no sovereign guarantee in the legal opinion given by former Justice Secretary Hernando Perez in the government contract with the Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona S.A. (IMPSA) in connection with the CBK project.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo today congratulated the members of the De La Salle Santiago-Zobel team who won the silver medal in the line tracing category of the 4^th International Robot Olympiad (IROC) that was held in Beijing last November 1 – 3, 2002.

In a presentation of the silver medalists in Malacanang, the President was informed that in the overall ranking, the Philippine delegation landed in the Top 10 in most of the categories in which they have participated.

The De La Salle Santiago-Zobel silver medalists are: Students Erbert Vergara, Ricardo Ortuste, and Adrian Oyong.

They were accompanied to Malacanang by De La Salle Santiago-Zobel Adviser Ezrel Alucilja and Dr. Amaury Gutierrez, president and chairman of the board of the Philippine Foundation for Science and Technology.

The Philippine delegation to the 4^th IROC was composed of five schools consisting of three to four students and one adviser. The school which competed aside from De La Salle Santiago-Zobel, were the Grace Christian High School, Philippine Science High School, First Asia Institute of Technology and Humanities and the UP Integrated School.

The IROC was participated in by a total of 70 teams from seven Asian countries.

The competition was created to address the young people’s need for opportunities to foster vision of science and technology.

Thus, it has become an international creative event to cope with the century of science and technology in the millennium.

As a whole, it aims to establish an international scientific competition for students of the new generation.

Robotics is the art and science of using robots, a mechanical device controlled by a system. It becomes the interests of the people around the world because it gives the chance for the computers to interact with the real world.

Elements of the Task Force Anti-Smuggling apprehend today total of 14 container vans at the Port of Manila found to have misdeclared import items or no import permits at all.

The inspection and subsequent confiscation of the contraband goods was led by two Cabinet secretaries and the PSG Commanding General on direct orders of the Office of the President.

Finance Secretary Jose Luis Camacho and Agriculture Secretary Luis Lorenzo were joined by Brig. Gen. Hermogenes C. Esperon of the Presidential Security Group (PSG) in the random opening of refrigerated vans at the Port of Manila, which was found to have a current inventory of 126 refrigerated vans.

The inspection and opening of the refrigerated container vans, some unloaded in the port for several months now, yielded tons of meat, vegetables, and fruits from China, Thailand, Canada and Korea.

The intensified operations of the Anti- Smuggling Task Force these past weeks were in response to President Macapagal-Arroyo’s directive last December to intensify monitoring and subsequent confiscation of illegally imported products.

Charges against smugglers were also filed, with the end goal of arresting the smuggling of meat and vegetables products, which has been hurting the local farmers and growers.

The President’s directive led to the creation of the inter-agency Task Force Against Smuggling under the supervision of a Cabinet Oversight Committee.

The President also gave full authority to the task force to inspect all incoming refrigerated vans in all ports of entry throughout the country. Operatives have started monitoring operations in the Ports of Cebu, Davao, Subic and Batangas.