The sight of a 12-year-old boy in the front-page photo Friday of a major daily, a victim of a firecracker explosion, would have elicited sympathy from readers, but why didn’t he?
Because it served him right.
But it would have been better if the firecracker exploded in the hands of the boy’s parents.
The Department of Health and media reminded the public weeks before the New Year’s Eve revelry about the dangers of exploding firecrackers.
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Another firecracker victim, 29-year-old Randy dela Pena, was caught on camera writhing in pain while being treated at the East Avenue Medical Center.
Dela Pena’s thumb was nearly detached.
Like that 12-year-old and Dela Pena, some people learn the hard way.
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What’s this rumor that one of the “Alabang Boys,” Joseph Ramirez Tecson, 23, is a relative of the husband of a Malacañang official?
Tsk, tsk, tsk!
No wonder, somebody at the Office of the Executive Secretary was reportedly pressuring an official at the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to desist from pursuing the case.
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PDEA chief Dionisio Santiago and his men deserve kudos for not succumbing to pressure and the color of money in the much-publicized drug bust.
The first time I met Maj. Ferdinand Marcelino, PDEA’s chief of the Special Enforcement Service, he struck me as a no-nonsense, incorruptible guy.
Marcelino, who is said to have turned down a P20-million bribe offer, is on loan to the PDEA from the Philippine Marines.
If Marcelino were a member of the Philippine National Police, one wonders if he would have resisted the temptation.
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If the rumor about Tecson’s relationship to a Malacañang VIP and the calls to the PDEA are true, this administration has completely gone to the pits.
The NBN-ZTE scandal, the P728-million fertilizer scam, the distribution of bribe money to congressmen and governors in Malacañang.
And now, the drug scandal.
No other administration can beat President Gloria’s in notoriety.
And what’s worse is that this administration seems not to be affected by all the brickbats.
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The saving grace of the Arroyo administration are the PDEA and the Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group (PASG).GMA chose her antidrug czar and antismuggling czar well.
PASG chief Antonio Villar didn’t succumb either to pressures from a relative of Ms Arroyo to go easy on two siblings allegedly behind rampant smuggling at the piers.
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The most ugly rumor about the First Family in the year just past was about the emergency landing of a US-bound PAL plane at an airport in Japan to off-load Mike Arroyo who was supposedly very sick.
The rumor had it that Mr. Arroyo was just feigning sickness, but was forewarned that he was going to be arrested in the US for money laundering.
The rumor is very unfair to the Arroyos, especially to Mike, as he was really very ill at that time.
This writer doesn’t believe the rumor; it’s hogwash.
However, to give the lie to that rumor, I suggest that Mike Arroyo go to the US.
