After losing father to cops, Mayor Benhur Abalos loses father-in-law

When it rains, it pours.

After his father, ex-Commission on Elections Chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr., was whisked off to detention at the Southern Police District (SPD) headquarters on charges of election sabotage, Mandaluyong Mayor Benhur Abalos on Thursday lost his father-in-law to a heart attack, the mayor himself revealed.

Abalos had to cut short a phone interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer on learning that the father of his wife, Carmelita Aguilar, had just suffered a heart attack.

Asked a few minutes later how his father-in-law was, the mayor replied via text: “He just died.”

This was confirmed by Jimmy Isidro, Mandaluyong chief public information officer, who said that Nestor Aguilar or “Papang,” as the mayor’s father in law was called, expired in the intensive care unit of the Mandaluyong Medical Center where he had been confined for some time.

Prior to this, Abalos was telling the Inquirer he was thinking of asking the SPD to allow his father out of his detention room for at least 30 minutes each day to get some exercise.

He said his father had a history of deep venous thrombosis, which is the formation of a blood clot in a vein deep in the body, usually in the legs, that could lead to an embolism.

“He’s already old, he needs the exercise,” Abalos said.

But in a radio news report, SPD deputy director for operations Senior Superintendent Federico Castro was quoted as saying that Abalos’ request could not be granted in the absence of a court order.

The Pasay City Regional Trial Court scheduled for Friday the hearing on the separate motions for house arrest and bail filed by the elder Abalos’ lawyer, Brigido Dulay. Kristine Felisse Mangunay