Monday, November 19, 2007 Editorial: Fourth floor jinx
SOMETHING must be done by Gaisano mall management and the City Government to prevent people from jumping off the fourth floor of the mall in light of the latest "high jump" incident that injured a 39-year-old male said to be caught on the throes of depression.
Were it not for the Christmas tree that got installed in the lower floor, the man may have spent Christmas in hell. And this is not the first time this happened, though the mall's fourth floor had also been the scene of a near stampede when some mallgoers supposedly felt that the fourth floor was about to collapse due to the crowd that gathered for a show held there.
Probably the most serious case of "high jump" hijinks in that mall's fourth floor is the case last year in which a suicidal man jumped to his death from that spot and landed headfirst on a woman who got paralyzed as a result.
Either the local officials or the mall management should set up more safety measures to prevent these things from happening. If not, something worse may happen.
The case deepens
THE plot thickens and the rewards get higher in the investigation into the death of Basilan Representative Wahab Akbar who was rumored to be the "father of the Abu Sayaff" though he promptly denied it in his one and only privilege speech before the House of Representatives sometime before he got felled by a timed explosion outside the halls of Congress.
But while the national government raised the reward amount to P8.2 million, the militant leftist communist groups and the communist New People's Army (NPA) may have been silent for now after proclaiming to all who care to listen that martial law would be formally announced by the national government following the Congress explosion and, sometime before that, the Glorietta mall explosion.
Until there are further incidents of violence, those trying to raise the level of public alarm and create all sorts of alarmist scenarios, particularly those in the ideological left should best shut up lest they be revealed for the insidious opportunists that they are.
Unless of course if they want to make things worse, which plays up to their agenda to create anarchy and sow dissension within the public.
At any rate, the investigation still remains in its early stages and the alleged involvement of some former lawmakers in Akbar's murder have yet to be proven.
Still, the people have a lead on the perpetrators and the concern is that the authorities don't water down their inquiry by cutting corners and stopping at powerful figures with influence in the Arroyo administration or any other political group.
