Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Malilong: Radaza should get out of his shell By Frank Malilong The Other Side
SO it’s a hoax. But why are there still people who are not buying the official police line?
Warnings on the existence of a bizarre fraternity initiation rite in which neophytes are made to drive cars without headlights with orders to chase and kill the driver and occupants of the first vehicle that call their attention have been circulating since last year, as far as I can remember. It is only now, however, that the police “officially” acknowledged the rumors.
Some rumors are so out-of-this-world, it is easy to recognize and dismiss them. This one has refused to die, however. Recipients of text messages and e-mails apparently found enough reason to believe that the warning is not a hoax and heeded the sender’s request to “please pass.”
Ironically, the police may have wittingly or unwittingly provided the reason themselves. Did you notice how they immediately ascribe unsolved killings to frat wars? When two men on a motorcycle shot and killed three men early this month, for example, the police were quick to say that the violence was frat-related even if the targets appeared to have been picked at random.
If fraternity men shoot innocent people for no apparent motive, how can it be not possible for them to chase cars and kill the occupants as part of their initiation rites? The police have to address this question if they want to assuage our fears.
***
We seem to be getting battered all over the world these days. As if the “Desperate Housewives” episode and the distasteful reference to former president Cory Aquino as “slut” by some American idiots were not enough, here comes a bloke, who once clowned his way to the presidency of Poland, blaming the Philippines for his alcoholic problems.
“We’re getting bad publicity from the former president of Poland,” my daughter wrote me recently. “He’s saying that he’s been taking strong medicine for a tropical disease he got from the Philippines to explain why he’s been drunk in several public affairs--–he’s campaigning for his party. Now, drunk people are giving as an excuse that they are so because they got a virus from the Philippines.”
She said she has called the attention of the Philippine Consulate in Warsaw (our nearest embassy is in Budapest) to clear the issue.
I can understand my daughter’s agitation but I think that we should just leave the drunkards alone in their state of inebriation especially since we have a fair share of them in our officialdom, too.
***
I used to play basketball with his late brother and I briefly worked with his wife in a bank but that’s the closest that I can claim to knowing Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza. He is not like any other politician in that he shuns, instead of seeks, the limelight.
I think he should get out of his shell and erase whatever impression that he is trying to hide behind the coattails of his lawyers. His refusal to personally take up his defense has only made it easier for his critics to demonize him.
Public perception is shaped mostly by what one hears and from whom. Having seen someone’s life having been ruined by a merciless media, I can almost feel a sense of déjà vu in Radaza’s case. I’m sure he is not the ogre that he has been pictured to be. His brother Frankie wasn’t and Paz couldn’t have married one.
