Enhancing notoriety

Long after the smoke of the election season has cleared in Cebu and other parts of the country, we will all wake up to face the same old problems of peace and order, garbage, damaged roads and dilapidated buildings and so on ad nauseum.

Such problems are present in Talisay City, which is still reeling from the double whammy of the market vendors problem and Mayor Socrates Fernandez’s son Joavan, who made a mockery of the law with his jailbreak last week a few days after he was arrested.

The latest episode in this most tiresome soap opera is the police’s support of a cash bounty to be placed on Joavan’s head in order to fast-track his arrest, a new yet not totally unexpected development given the way they’ve failed to even catch sight of him or his minions for the past few days.

The declaration of a cash bounty would certainly add points to the notoriety of the mayor’s son, a reputation that he may or may not be relishing given his ability to be four steps ahead of the Talisay City police.

With every piece of news about his continued flaunting of the law, Joavan grows ever bolder and encouraged to continue his criminal ways.

It would be impossible to expect the mayor to surrender his adopted son, much less extend assistance to the police search owing to his reluctance to see Joavan any minute longer within the dank confines of jail.

The cash bounty would have to be rather large to entice people to tell the police of Joavan’s whereabouts but it’s certainly no guarantee. There were proposals to place a cash reward for information leading to murder suspect Bella Santos’s whereabouts but it was a lucky break that led Cebu police to arrest her in a Manila mall.

With police on his trail, a cash bounty may only drive Joavan further into the underground with his father playing the innocent and not above covering his adopted son’s tracks if only to evade capture.

Which is why if he does get elected mayor, Rep. Eduardo Gullas should order the police and even outgoing Mayor Fernandez to yield Joavan now before anything serious happens to him.

Gullas promised during last month’s Mega Cebu Candidates Forum that no one would be above the law in Talisay City. Joavan’s arrest and eventual escape would pose a serious challenge to that claim even if Talisay City residents are too scared or indifferent to remind Gullas about it.

In the event he does get arrested, it would be to the interest of Talisay City residents and Metro Cebu if this troublemaker is jailed in Muntinglupa or some other place outside Cebu. Hopefully he would get rehabilitated; if not, at least he won’t cause any more trouble behind bars.