Time is of the essence

WITH the expected delay in the installation of facilities for rehabilitation of drug dependents in Pangasinan, it would be to the benefit of both the provincial administration and the drug users (who look forward to being rehabilitated) to look into the implementation of programs in towns where a big number of drug dependents surrendered to the police, using the successful experience in Mangaldan as the model.

The Mangaldan experience has proven that the drug dependents can still be helped even without an infrastructure for live-in participants by adopting a workshop approach. As published in our November 13 issue, the rehab program organized by the Decendants Ministry International in Mangaldan only needed an effective resource person, a small meeting venue for the sessions, and donations from private and business groups to cover the costs of meals of rehab participants and other incidental expenses for the organization.

The provincial government can learn not only from the program’s lead discussant, Lemton Agricola, a Filipino-American from Hawaii, himself a reformed addict, but from the Mangaldan’s first batch of graduates.

Time is of the essence. If the drug users and pushers who wish to be helped today are not helped in time, the need to wait for the construction of a permanent facility might be too late for them. They could already be targeted for summary execution by their protectors or be killed in police operations.

A permanent facility is ideal and should be had but this should not stand in the way of rehabilitating our Pangasinenses in need.

Heirs to blame

THE Marcos burial at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani all the more deepened the wounds of national division.  There is a solution so simple to end the enmity, divide, and yet, our so-called leaders refuse to do it.  Bury Marcos in Ilocandia and it should have been a closed chapter.  But President Duterte wanted the Supreme Court’s decision: Bury Marcos at the LNMB or not?  The Supreme Court said, yes, it is legal to do it.  With that, it effectively dumped Marcos’ grievous sins of looting the nation’s coffers, torturing and killing nationalists and imposing a 14-year dictatorship against the will of the Filipino people.  Thus, instead of complete closure to the issue, the anti-Marcos protests will live on.  Healing and moving on are but empty rhetoric.  Rest in peace is now a mockery per se.  Marcos in purgatory now a given.  His heirs are also to blame. Unrepentant to the end.

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