Ending the loudest bang

IT was good while it lasted, and fortunately, not a single life was lost.

We refer to Dagupan City’s Barangay Pogo Grande’s annual event, lighting up firecrackers strung on posts along the barangay road every high noon of January 1 to welcome the new year for the past 17 years. Without a doubt, the activity that started with lighting about 1,000 firecrackers and finally 100,000 last year to create the loudest bang ever, became a tourist attraction over the years.

We, therefore, laud the decision of the barangay’s officials to finally end the fun adventure in response to clamor to stop risking lives of people and possible damages to properties, noting how it has evolved into a very dangerous level. It was an event that waited for a serious accident to happen. In fact, other barangays already decided to stage a similar event so imagine how things would have progressed if the barangays try to outdo each other each year.

By simply deciding to reduce the number of firecrackers would have just merely disappointed the regular audience, but deciding to stop would keep the memory of the most recent fun the barangay relished forever.

Remember those days in Pogo Grande?

‘They betrayed me’

IMMIGRATION hotshots Michael Robles and Al Argosino received P50 million from Macau-based Jack Lam.  That was an alleged payment to facilitate the release of Lam’s arrested 1,300 or so Chinese employees working without papers on Lam’s illegal gambling joints in Clark, Pampanga.  Robles and Argosino were caught on CCTV cameras receiving the cash placed in bags at the City of Dreams casino house in Pasay City.

“They betrayed me,” said Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, who recommended Robles and Argosino as Immigration deputy commissioners to President Duterte.  All four are members of the Lex Talionis fraternity at San Beda College.

Robles and Argosino have returned P30M to Aguirre, saying the money was supposed to be an evidence of Lam’s attempt to bribe his way out of any liability in the “escape” of Lam’s personnel.

 

If you can believe their alibi, then you can also believe that Marcos deserved that much-maligned burial at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani.

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