Friday, January 04, 2008 Talk back: Don’t let the inmates join the Sinulog By John Pala
PRISONERS should not be allowed to dance in the Sinulog parade.
The dance lessons given them are for good reasons no doubt, and there are benefits in physical and mental health that can be derived from them.
The original concept, after all, was not for tourism purposes or for political mileage.
And while other cities or countries notice the program and praised our government for implementing it, we should not allow ourselves to be carried away and put to risk, directly or indirectly, the safety of thousands of private citizens who will be attending the festivities.
We may not worry about the safety of the governor or other officials (they all have sufficient resources to secure themselves).
It is the multitude of Filipinos we should be concerned about.
I agree that the dancing inmates could be a plus factor in attracting tourists to our city or province.
But we should not exploit this to a point that we will violate the principles or rationale behind incarceration, or drain our thinning security resources and put the city at risk.
I am sure many of these inmates have reached stage of remorse and reformation.
But it will take a deeper and more thorough analysis by qualified scientists to make such a conclusion.
In addition, there are enough security challenges during the event that could stretch the reach of the police force.
Whatever the governor’s and our mayor’s motives may be in arguing about this, the matter should be “non-negotiable.”
No politician should be allowed to exploit the Sinulog to that extent.
I believe that there are more urgent priorities that we should be focusing on or quarrel about.
I don’t think our city is running dry of other tourist-attracting or crowd drawing ideas.
