‘Thou shalt not kill’
-A A +ASunday, October 16, 2011
IT HAS been bitingly hot the past three days, the weather seemingly making up for the rainy episode the week before. Days like these give local officials a chance to attend to whatever was damaged by the rain and prepare for the next downpour. Take Barangay Pakigne in Minglanilla where barangay officials led by its chief Cente Abella have been busy attending to post-Ramon requests by their constituents.
In Sitio Pinggan, a road right-of-way was so battered by the rain and muddied it became impassable even to motorcycles and tricycles. Abella and Barangay Councilor Miguel Adlawan, head of the barangay council’s committee on infrastructure, immediately acted on the request of some constituents for paving materials. The road is much better now, although the real test will be the next downpour.
I take it that other government officials, especially in Cebu and Mandaue Cities, are using the hot days to clear the waterways and improve the drainage system. Of course, that is common sense, but it still pays to remind them on this point.
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It’s the sixth of the 10 Commandments that God gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai. It’s therefore an old admonition: Thou shalt not kill. Killings, however, still happen everywhere and, in Cebu the past weeks, seemed to have gotten violent and dramatic.
Sunday was supposed to be the time Catholics are reminded of this commandment and other God’s teachings. Instead, what we got was the report that a man in Talisay City shot to death his wife, his three children and a house helper before he killed himself. This is a continuation of the spate of violent incidents that has worried some sectors.
Initial reports say that the perpetrator of the crime, a former seaman, was a mental case. I don’t think that exempts him from punishment for violating God’s sixth commandment. What I am saying is that if your belief is strong, killing people would be the last thing that you would do even when you have lost your mind. It’s something Catholics should ponder on.
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I am with my good friend Leny Ocasiones, Cebu chapter president of Gabriela Women’s Party-list, on the banning altogether of beauty pageants. Leny was reacting to the plan of the Cebu City Anti-Indecency Board (Caib) to bar during the holding of beauty pageants the wearing of two-piece bikinis. I would even go as far as calling for a ban on copy-cat pageants featuring gays and “macho gay” contestants. They are sometimes lewd.
A ban, however, will remain an ideal under present circumstances. To ban or not to ban beauty pageant was once a raging debate, especially during the Cold War. I think both the People’s Republic of China and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics frowned on the practice. In the latest edition of the Miss Universe pageant, China sent a representative and she even landed in the top five.
Since a ban is a dream as of the moment, I would also go with Caib’s plan, especially because it has included the putting of regulations on the other “pageants” that also proliferate in the barangays. I once saw a “macho gay” competition where a candidate almost stripped naked. Many people laughed at his antics, but it was lewd and no laughing matter.
Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on October 17, 2011.
Opinion
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