Think about it
Rep. Bataoil’s view on Mindanao tragedy cited
By Jun Velasco
“Mass media information must give way to expert view on security issues,” Walter Lippmann
AT the wedding of Mark Ydeo and Katrina Peralta at the Stadia on Wednesday on Jan. 28), Board Member Pogi Espino showed wisdom and filial leadership by showing up although fatigued by a tight schedule and an incipient flu.
“Pogi,” commented Montreal-based Mila Ydeo-Sacdeva, one of the ninangs, ” is so simpatiko and charismatic and maka-pamilya he is fit to take over his father, the highest-rating Governor Amado “Spines” Espino Jr.
Pogi later had to beg off due to fever, but left a pogi-sh memory to the wedding audience.
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While writing this, our sports columnist Jess Garcia called up from his Japan Air lines seat # 16 to bid us adieu for at least three months to visit his pretty twins, Raina and Raisa, full pledged nurses at a kidney center in Fortworth, Texas.
“Am leaving with a heavy heart,” he told us, intimating a problem we would rather leave unsaid.
We met Jess when he won the Tour of Luzon in 1973 after which we’ve since become buddies and brother-confessor.
One time in San Antonio, Texas, he called us by overseas and let us talk to Juan Manuel Marquez, resulting in our story atop the Manila Bulletin sports page with this head, “I want Pacquiao–Marquez.”
Jess even took us (with Cathy) to a Baguio gym last year to meet Manny Pacquiao only to settle for a photo session with his handler Freddie Roach. Later, we downed a round or two bottles of beer with PDI’s sports columnist Recah Trinidad and Gov. Manny Pinol, an old friend in the Bulletin.
Jess intimated he would e-mail his sports stories to the Punch and suggested to publisher Ermin to allow cumpadre Angel Gumarang, sports consultant of the provincial government and former sports coordinator of LNU, to write for the Punch, Angel’s obsession, that is, in consultation with Phil Celi.
Bon voyage, Jess, tawag ka when you land in George Bush’s country.”
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Congressman Pol Bataoil’s much-aired commentary on the Mindanao tragedy, or whatever you’d call it, gives us an idea of the sensitivity in handling an explosive, security material.
Great care, Pol told his interviewer Joel balolong of Aksyon Radyo, in sifting thru a mountain of material so as not to affect the security of the state and, in this Special Action Force tragedy’s case, the whole world.
Our sympathy goes to the fallen officers who gave up their lives to capture, dead or alive, Asia’s two top terrorists, Malaysian Zulkifli bin Hir, alias “Marwan,” who had a $6-million price on his head, and a Filipino terrorist, Abdul basit Usman.
They were fittingly accorded a heroes’ funeral, a line that stabs us in the heart, reminiscent of a friend’s cynical remark, ” better to be a living coward than a dead hero.”
With malice to none, we share the nation’s decision to honor the victims in what was a overt operation — so covert many of our national officials including DILG Secretary Mar Roxas was not even made aware of it.
For some time, many of those who couldn’t take the uncalled-for death of the heroic 44, would rake up our old feelings against American imperialism, involving hapless locals in US interest operations.
Marwan, a senior figure in the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has relocated to Piket, Cotabato, since 2002, while Zulkifli is a senior JI trainer and is engaged in terroristic activities.
The secrecy element reminds us of a column article by the late Walter Lippmann in the pre-martial law Manila Times as he delved into the limits of press freedom and access to information as a basic requirement in a democracy.
Bataoil echoed that policy when he said that state security should supersede mass information, which could affect sacrosanct security operations.
This, the public should be made to appreciate in face of public condemnation which has gone hysterical.
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Four US and Canada – based friends led by Dan Nino, former president of the Los Angeles Press Club, world JC Senator Jess Castillo, former California Jaycees president (1982-83 Charles E. Kulp Awardee), Ruben Tandoc of Montreal (an Alfredo Marquez book scholar), and Maria Nora Jugo-Bravo of San Francisco, California, and Kumadre Mila Sachdeva, a nurse in Montreal, have a common view of Pangasinan’s local politics: it is still “very local.”
It means, ex-solon mark Cojuangco, who Sendong So says has enlisted the support of majority of the mayors, will have to double time weeding out the stigma of his being a “non-Pangasinense” label in the 2016 gubernatorial showdown.
Manila-based political analyst Perry Callanta, son of our 1972 fellow marcher Porfirio Callanta, now past 90, thinks the 2016 governorship is Cojuangco’s ball game, while Pol Bataoil believes an Espino gubernatorial preeminence remains a force that’s hard to beat.
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NOTES: Bayambang’s sizzling politics might take an exciting twist in 2016 with business tycoon Cesar Quiambao entering his name in the mayoral race versus 3rd term Mayor Ric Camacho’s bet.
The management-molded Councilor Levin Uy may be pitted for vice mayor against hardboiled politician Vice Mayor Boying Junio whose mayoral dream will be held in abeyance for CTQ.
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