A providential incident

The government is filing another charge against the fugitive governor of Palawan, who has already been charged for the murder of environmentalist Gerardo Ortega. The former governor, Joel Reyes, has fled the country, and lately, it has been found out that he may have used somebody else’s passport to get out, hence the new charge of falsification. Why don’t they catch him first and then pile up all those charges on his head?

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Yesterday, reports said that President Aquino scolded the Immigration Office for its failure to prevent the flight of Reyes, who was accused together with his brother, a mayor, who is also missing. It is good to know that some officials are being taken to task for their failures, but maybe it would take more than words to prod them. A change of assignment, maybe to a hardship post, will send the message faster to all laggards in the service.

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The new head of the National Capital Region Police Office, Gen. Leonardo Espina, got his baptism of fire on the very first day of his assumption of the post when his own son was victimized by a crooked cop. Maybe it was providential, because it gave the new Police head a stark demonstration of how the goons in the police organization operate. Residents of the National Capital Region should be thankful that the extortion attempt took place then.

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Yesterday it was reported that the wicked cop, a certain SPO4 Jose de la Peña, had already been dismissed from the service, with his benefits forfeited, perpetual disqualification from employment in the police service, and worse, he will also be facing at least seven cases related to his operations. Several other victims have already shown up, and have identified him, so De la Peña will have a lot of problems on his hands, aside from losing his job. I wonder, too, what made him so greedy to have more money. Has a check on his background been made, and does it reveal any other families he is maintaining aside from his legitimate one?

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This early, NCRPO Chief Espina has already been laying down the law to his policemen, and while some of them may be trivial, I am sure people will appreciate what he is doing. Espina has ordered the cops to watch their weight, maintain a clean and neat appearance, and avoid hair dyes that will make them look queer and use only black if they have to color their hair. So we will no longer see cops with blonde or red hair in Manila now.

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By the way, one of the things Espina stressed to his cops was for them to always use the expression “po” (a term of respect) when addressing people, even criminals. That is something Visayans like us always fail to use, since we do not have even its equivalent in our language. My friend, who married a conservative family from Quezon province, was always reminded by her husband to say it to his folks. But she always forgot and sometimes had already said goodbye and was in their car to leave, when she remembers, and runs back to call PO”.

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Beleaguered Undersecretary Rico Puno of the Department of Interior and Local Governments, has shown up and has resigned from his position, supposedly to give the new DILG head a free hand to choose his co-workers. But his problems will not end with his resignation, as there are members of the Senate who are sharpening their claws and licking their chops as they await his presence before them. In a dramatic statement that was quoted by national media, Puno, stressing his loyalty to the President, reportedly declared that he was “ready to take a bullet for Noy”.

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Where did we hear that before? Ah, it was attributed to the aide of the late Secretary Robredo, who was the lone survivor of the plane crash that took the lives of his boss and the two pilots of the ill-fated plane. While grieving and blaming himself for his failure to save Robredo, Joey Abrazado reportedly said he would have taken a bullet for Robredo, but had not ever imagined being in a plane crash. So what can we say about Puno’s statement? At the Senate, maybe they will shout “Plagiarism!” and add it to the complaints against Puno.

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As this was being written, news came out that American Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other people in the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi had been killed in an attack. Aside from Benghazi, attacks of American embassies in Libya and Cairo were also staged. In Cairo, protestors also burned the American Flag. That would not be such a big issue, because some Americans, or people residing in the U.S., have also done that. But to actually kill diplomatic officials? Isn’t that of grave international concern?*

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