Piñol hasn’t forgotten roots

Journalists call it “SS.”

The term, which has a vulgar meaning, refers to stretching the facts to make a story more interesting.

Something like making a mountain out of a molehill.

Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol, a former journalist, caused a nationwide — nay, even an international — furor when he announced that the chickens that had died by the thousands in San Luis town, Pampanga province, may have been infected with the deadly H5N1 flu virus.

The virus strain killed six people in Hong Kong in 1997 and caused the culling of 1.5 million chickens in what was then a British colony.

Worldwide, there have been 350 deaths caused by the H5N1 flu virus since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Piñol’s pronouncement caused some panic throughout the country and resulted in two barangays in San Luis being placed under quarantine.

Gov. Lilia “Baby” Pineda also declared a state of calamity in the province because of Piñol’s bogey.

Where the agriculture chief got the idea that the deadly flu virus had infected poultry farms in Pampanga — even before experts had their say — only he knows.

Even the Department of Health, whose chief Paulyn Ubial is an Ilonggo from Cotabato like Piñol, got into the act by warning people to cover their nose and mouth in areas infected by bird flu.

But yesterday, the Bureau of Animal Industry which is under the Department of Agriculture issued a bulletin saying the mass death of chickens in San Luis was caused by ordinary avian flu, which is not dangerous to humans.

Agriculturist Gerry “Ka Gerry” Geronimo, who has a multiawarded radio show dealing with life on the farm, called it “peste sa manok,” which is known in Southern Tagalog provinces as “natanga ang manok” (literally, chickens becoming disoriented).

“Bird flu is not endemic in the Philippines,” Ka Gerry said.

Hey, Manny, you should have discarded your habits as a journalist when you entered politics and became governor of North Cotabato province a long time ago.

* * *

Many people probably fell off their chairs when they heard Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon telling reporters after the Senate hearing Tuesday that “the good guys in the bureau were being persecuted.”

They were probably wondering who these “good guys” were.

When Faeldon refused to answer at first if there was still corruption in the customs bureau during his watch, the public knew he was being asked a very difficult question.

Even his honest predecessors were not able to stamp out corruption at the Bureau of Customs.

* * *

Here’s one for the books.

The Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), a unit of the Philippine National Police, has filed criminal complaints against Ozamiz City Mayor Reynaldo Parojinog and his wife Susan.

The case was filed two weeks after the couple was killed in an alleged shootout with the police.

It’s like shooting a body in a morgue.