Welcome 2010: Another year of fruitful service, brighter hope
Tacloban City (January 3) — As various firecrackers of all shapes and forms roared into the air with million multi-colored lights blazing across the midnight horizon, millions of Filipinos joined the whole world in welcoming the new year 2010 with new hopes for a better tomorrow.
Amid the firecracker explosions turning the midnight sky into a kaleidoscope of colors, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, one would dare to contemplate, welcomed 2010 as another year of fruitful service to the country and its people.
For even if she was supposed to be on vacation with her family in Baguio, the President, on the last day of the year, had various activities to do, inaugurating various infrastructure projects — the P625-million President Quirino Bridge, which seeks to ensure the safe travel of commuters to and from Northern Luzon. Apart from the President Quirino Bridge, Mrs. Arroyo also inaugurated the Amburayan Bridge in Sudipen, La Union.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo also ordered the dismantling of private armies to pave the way for peaceful elections next year with the creation of the independent commission to address the alleged existence of private armies in the country under A.O. 275.
Breaking family tradition, President Arroyo and her family broke family tradition of spending New Year’s Eve in Baguio City. Instead, they will welcomed 2010 in Malacañang.
The Filipinos welcomed the New Year with higher and brighter hopes. What with the information that the P1 price rollback on all gasoline products and 50 centavos price rollback for diesel and kerosene implemented by Eastern Petroleum effective December 26 to midnight of December 31 has been extended till midnight of January 6, 2008.
The growing strength of the peso and the stable outlook for crude and finished petroleum products for the first few days of January are sufficient basis for extending the rollback.
The Pamaskong Handog ng Pangulo to the disadvantaged families in the first and second priority provinces of the country, really saw to it that these families will meet the new year with renewed faith and brighter hope knowing that the government is there for them.
Even the business community optimistically sees 2010 to definitely be better than 2009, not only because the US market is getting better, but also because 2010 will be fueled by political expenditures for the upcoming presidential elections in 2010, and the country continue to have OFW heroes who continue to send their dollars here.
The Filipinos are not losing hope, in fact their hopes are now brighter for a better year in 2010 because of the economic developments in 2009 under the determined and focused leadership of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
With the cooperation and support from all sectors of society, economic prosperity and peace will be achieved in 2010. (PIA 
