Friday, January 11, 2008 Malilong: Mandaue police’s rare feat By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THE Mandaue City police deserve praise for quickly solving the murder of a fellow member of the force and the wounding of another. While some quarters doubt if the policemen would have acted as efficiently had the victim not been a fellow cop, you cannot take away the sheen off the accomplishment. Arresting the suspects within 48 hours is a rare feat, indeed, especially when you consider the track record of the police in crime solution.
Still, one cannot help but notice the irony in the admirable manner that the Mandaue police handled the investigation of the SPO1 Pedro Sucion murder. If they had acted just as decisively in rushing to his and buddy PO2 Darius Conejos’ side when they called for back-up, wouldn’t Sucion have been around today to receive his commendation, too?
Would Sucion and Conejos have escaped unhurt had they been properly trained? Would Sucion have survived had the Mandaue police been better equipped for mobility and help had timely arrived?
Taking all these questions into consideration, do you think the Mandaue police can, when they receive their commendations, look at Sucion’s widow straight in the eye?
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Only Gov. Gwen Garcia can stop the implementation of the Cebu Trans-Axial highway, said Vice Gov. Gregorio Sanchez. But why should she?
Even University of San Carlos Water Resource Center officials were quoted as saying that it is fine with them if the project pushes through provided that the concerns that they raised about possible landslides in sections of the road that are built on unstable ground are addressed. So, there you go.
Instead of quibbling over peripheral issues, the government and environmentalist groups should sit down to make sure the target dates of the project launch and of completion are met. That we need the Trans-Axial is no longer a question. What the people are interested to find out is when the highway can be made available for their use.
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His bosses should stop proclaiming that the relief of Land Transportation Office 7 Director Alex Leyson is not a punishment because the more they do it, the more it becomes obvious that Alex was banished from the region over his failure to stop the registration of so many smuggled luxury cars in the district offices under his watch, particularly the one in Toledo City.
Leyson’s problem is that he’s too much of a nice guy. It is possible that he had an idea of the shenanigans being perpetrated by some corrupt subordinates in cahoots with smugglers but chose to ignore it because he didn’t want to step on some people’s toes. It is also possible that Alex knew too much so he had to be relocated while the issue is still burning. In either case, I think Alex is being made a sacrificial lamb.
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Two readers wrote to express their disgust over SkyCable’s decision to banish Basketball TV and Solar Sports from the air. Oscar Ma and Gino Paolo Peralta said that they totally and absolutely agree that the replacement channels are really useless. “To think that Basketball TV was one of the main reasons I subscribed to SkyCable,” Peralta grumbled.
SkyCable announced last December that the reason Solar Sports and three other channels were replaced was “better viewing,” but who is kidding who?
“You’re right,” Ma said. “Customer satisfaction is the least of SkyCable’s concerns.”
