Wednesday, April 23, 2008 Malilong: Radaza’s audience with the cardinal By Frank Malilong The Other Side
A friend who took up nursing as a second course once showed me a picture in her cellular phone of a woman’s genitals immediately after childbirth. I nearly choked.
I do not know if the taking of the picture was a required course in nursing but I am certain that there was no redeeming value in showing it to others.
This, said another friend, was what was basically evil in the case of the gay florist. True, he said, the patient brought his condition upon himself and owed his life to the surgical team. His unique case was perfect for scholarly discussion and asking for his permission to record the entire procedure would have been a reasonable request.
What happened, he noted, is that not only is there no showing that the victim consented to be videoed while the perfume container was being removed from his rectum, the person who recorded the proceedings, with at least the tacit consent of the surgeon, was not an aspiring scholar but a confirmed voyeur.
It is this breach of privacy, he said, that makes the florist’s case appalling.
Reader Alex Galindez agrees. “I used to work as a medical specialist at VSMMC,” he wrote. “In fact, I have spent my first ten years as a physician in this hospital. The recent scandal that has rocked my hospital has left me thinking how the new crop of physicians and nurses has breached the tenets of patient care. What were they thinking? It is unpardonable uploading a video of a patient in an unsavory situation. Whatever happened to the patient-physician confidentiality clause?”
Indeed, what happened?
***
Unknown to many, Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza sought and was granted an audience with Ricardo Cardinal Vidal to explain his side on his quarrel with businessman Efrain Pelaez Jr. many months ago. He was accompanied by his lawyer, Richard Sison.
Sison did most of the explaining, according to a source, with Radaza butting in every now and then. Towards the end of Dick’s presentation, the cardinal reportedly told him, “You’re a very good lawyer.”
I’m mentioning this because Dick’s client has just been charged by the Ombudsman for alleged graft in the purchase of the lampposts that were used for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit last year. Let’s see if Dick, who is one of Cebu’s best trial lawyers, will have the same success convincing the Sandiganbayan of his client’s innocence as he had with the cardinal.
***
The all-out support that Mayor Tommy Osmeña and city councilors gave Mike Rama in the latter’s successful campaign for the national presidency of the country’s vice mayors’ league should lay to rest all doubts on the mayor’s commitment to name Mike his successor in 2010.
I once heard Tommy on radio explaining why he was picking Mike as his party’s next candidate for mayor, citing the latter’s humility and “teammanship.” “Dili tigpakaayong laki,” that was what he said.
Indeed, the reason their relationship has never been seriously threatened until now is Mike’s aversion to upstaging the mayor. There had been some aggravations, City Hall’s sources said, but Mike’s non-combative nature saved the day for the partnership. Looks like that trait could propel him to the city’s top post, too.
