Think about it

By June 25, 2007Archives, Opinion

Ed, get those cellphone snatchers!

By Jun Velasco

LAST Thursday afternoon, first year student Dindin Iñigo, daughter of Balita sports editor Dennis Iñigo and Bulletin correspondent Liezel Basa, just alighted from a trike from Mother Goose High School in Dagupan to Calasiao when her Motorola cellphone fell on the trike’s floor.

When she tried to get the unit, the driver, who is loco by nature, sped away despite the victims yelling and pleading for him to stop.

Up to this writing, Dindin’s hope to recover her cellphone has dimmed despite POSO boss Robert Erfe Mejia’s effort and broadcasters’ ganging up on cellphone snatchers which have proliferated in the city.

Dindin, by the way, was a god-daughter of Governor-elect Spines Espino, Mayor Al Fernandez, former Governor Oscar Orbos, former Congressman Eric Acuña, former San Manuel Vice Mayor Cris Suller, songbird Imelda Papin, this columnist and several mediamen from Manila..

Let’s disabuse your mind. It’s not because of Dindin’s stellar ninongs and ninangs that we wrote about the subject. It’s because of a theory the city’s vaunted economic growth has also sired more lawless elements that uglify the city.

Is the crime wave a logical effect of economic progress?  We don’t think so. We call the attention of General Pol Bataoil, Colonels Gani Neris and Ed Basbas to reverse the phenomena.

The Dindin incident may just be a tip of the ice berg. Help!

* * * *

As we wrote this, one of the headline news from our TV set was that Speaker Joe de Venecia had just received President Gloria Arroyo’s green light for the House leadership vote. Ho hum!

To appreciate the country’s political twists and turns, go back to the brief past, review the antecedents. It’s true the Garcias have thrown massive support for PGMA in the 2004 presidential and recent elections. Nothing can be farther from the historic fact that it was   JdV who authored Gloria’s rise to the presidency.

Don Pablo Garcia may be good to Gloria, but JdV’s support to her is unbeatable.

The rest are mostly embellishments of the current dispensation.

* * * *

 Aside from the former Ambassador Mel Jovellanos-led unveiling of  Jose Rizal’s Mi Ultimo Adios at the Rizal monument in Dagupan, our friends — Cerge Remonde and Amadis Guerrero — also did their bit  for the national hero on his l46th birthday anniversary.

Chipchip, our youngest, who writes for PMS sent us this short piece we culled from a speech he wrote for Cerge, a Cebuano Knight of Rizal, who at UP-Diliman said: “Just as Rizal consecrated his life to liberate us from colonial rule, so must our government officials continually work for our people’s freedom from poverty, corruption and terrorism so that we can build a new Philippines.”

Old hat? But we should be tireless articulating it.  Rizal did so in his time.

Meanwhile, Amadis Guerrero in PDI wrote: “In addition to being a novelist, poet, linguist, sculptor, physician, reformer among other things, Rizal was an environmentalist at a time when Mother Earth was not yet worldwide or even fashionable.

While in Heidelberg, Germany, Rizal sought out nature and took long walks through the forest. One of his famous poems, ‘A las Flores de Heidelberg,’ was a tribute to the flowers of the city.

He also praised the local landscape to his European friends, describing it as certainly richer and all its landscape variegated with brilliant colors.’

      While in exile in Dapitan, Rizal planted trees and designed a water system for the community. ‘It was sustainable extraction of water,’ says Liesel Lim of the Green Army.”

(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/think-about-it/)

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