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Thursday, June 10, 2004
Mongaya: Torralba shooting
By Anol Mongaya
CHOY Torralba has stepped on powerful toes in Cebu and Bohol as a hard-hitting radio commentator. The camp of Sen. Noli de Castro also blamed him for engineering the tirades from the senator’s first wife. Torralba, after all, was the media coordinator of Noli’s rival in the vice presidential race, Sen. Loren Legarda.
However, police investigators are reportedly looking into the possibility the Torralba ambush perpetrated by a lone gunman the other afternoon was a result of a love triangle.
Perhaps, this was because the gunman obviously was an amateur. Of his 12 shots, he managed to hit Torralba three times in non-fatal parts of the body. The hit contrasted with the way the late customs collector Wewe Lao was wasted last year. This prompted Mayor Tomas Osmeña to jokingly blurt out on television that the suspect in Torralba’s shooting could be a Cebu City policeman.
The police reportedly are on the heels of a young man based on information provided by Torralba. The guy, who is said to be the boyfriend of a woman linked to Torralba, can no longer be found in his Mandaue city address.
But the police should not limit themselves to this theory knowing Torralba to be a controversial media figure himself. The shooting shows us how dangerous it is to be a hard-hitting media personality.
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Local supporters of Fernando Poe Jr. are stirring after a brief pause. They have begun joining the prayer vigil at the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral grounds and are organizing limited protest actions.
I think the post-election hiatus was a result of the defeat of pro-FPJ candidates in Cebu. Former mayor Alvin Garcia and Totol Batuhan, it seems, have given up on filing election protests on alleged cheating. Batuhan, for example, learned that his electoral protest in 2001 amounted to practically nothing.
But I was told that some pro-FPJ personalities persevered in securing evidence to prove that cheating actually occurred in Cebu. They are reportedly expected to pre-sent some of their evidence today
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Inside the halls of Congress, the opposition are doing their best to delay the proceedings, like Sen. Nene Pimentel’s four-hour filibuster. Meanwhile, the administration is bent on using its Senate and House majority to speed up the count.
Many think efforts to delay the canvassing could be part of a destabilization plot. Many fear the “no-proclamation” and the accompanying coup scenarios because this would mean political instability.
In my view, the ideal is to conduct fast yet credible canvassing. Unfortunately, politics by mostly traditional politicians is making this feat difficult to achieve.
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Some believe that protest actions in Cebu won’t be a factor in the unfolding drama in Metro Manila surrounding the canvassing of votes for president and vice president.
But the fact that Cebu gave Arroyo an advantage of 1.2 million votes seems to rankle in the minds of opposition leaders. They could not believe this is possible if no cheating was carried out.
Thus, I won’t be surprised if the opposition will continue looking for evidence of fraud particularly in Cebu. They would love to discredit GMA’s 1.2 million majority in Cebu. Let’s see if they can show us credible proof. But the opposition should hurry because the people are finding the antics of their leaders in the halls of Congress boring. As I wrote several times, unless they can present credible witnesses, it would be better for opposition leaders like Pimentel and Rep. Digaden Dilangalen to just shut up.
The canvassing shows that the difference between the votes for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and FPJ is very slim. Yesterday for instance, FPJ momentarily took the lead from GMA, though she came back in the afternoon. Makapabuhig dugo for FPJ supporters.
(e-mail: superbalita@sunstar.com.ph; or anol_cebu@hotmail.com; text: 0917-9761193)
(June 10, 2004 issue)
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