Accidents waiting to happen

This is one accident waiting to happen. Judging by the way Cebuano drivers turn or move from one lane to another without using their vehicles’ signal lights, I think automobile companies had better remove such gadgets when selling their brands here in Cebu. After all, it does seem like only 10 percent of Cebuano motorists know how to use such lights.

Come, see for yourself as you drive the streets, even the guy with a brand-new BMW or Mercedes Benz leisurely turns the corner without doing the very simple act of flicking the stick that turns on his/her signal light 20 meters prior. Or do these drivers, many of them clearly rich and educated, assume that Cebuanos are clairvoyant, able to predict when the car ahead will suddenly turn the corner or move to another lane?

This simple act is illustrative of what ails many Cebuanos and how technology can become a useless device when in the hands of an idiot. Little effort is required to practice this road courtesy and yet few people are able to do it.

And you think public utility drivers, many of them barely reaching high school, are the only culprits. On the contrary, even these wealthy drivers on luxury cars do the same.

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The belfry of Dumanjug Church is also a disaster waiting to happen. Somebody decided to put a cement dome on its top and rounded it off with a series of concrete balusters, perhaps to mimic the old belfry of the Basilica del Sto. Niño. This was sometime in 2004. Seven years and two huge parasitic balete tree growths later and you now have some of the walls and the shallow coral stone pilasters holding all these up beginning to buckle. The concrete cement structure is putting tremendous pressure on this the tallest belfry in Cebu and time is running out.

This is one of the reasons why Gov. Gwendolyn F. Garcia wants an agreement signed with the Archdiocese of Cebu. The moment the safety of parishioners who are first and foremost constituents of the province of Cebu is jeopardized, she knows she will be heaped with criticisms left and right why she did not do anything about it. And so a draft agreement was crafted by her legal team and presented to the archbishop, His Excellency Jose Palma.

The draft agreement copies in toto the agreement signed between the Vatican and the Republic of the Philippines way back in 2007, after about two years of diplomatic exchanges and dispatches. I do not see any reason why church authorities will question the intent of the agreement, which is to establish a joint body that will then create the ground rules for the coming cooperation and collaboration between these two institutions to protect Cebu’s ecclesiastical heritage.

Perhaps there will be those who think the agreement should not be rushed. I can only hope that the belfry of Dumanjug (and I hear also that of Daanbantayan) will hold and not topple over, tired of waiting.