Sunday, September 28, 2008 Malilong: Ironies in a stabbing incident By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THAT a reputable firm with a resume showing perhaps many billion pesos worth of investments in real estate development has offered to purchase and/or develop 50 hectares of the South Reclamation Properties (SRP) is the best news I’ve heard about the SRP in recent history. What is lacking is for Filinvest Land Inc. to show Mayor Tomas Osmeña the color of its money.
That should come soon. I am sure both parties have done their respective due diligence studies already. The nitty-gritty has been resolved; what needs to be done is to piece the details together.
Don’t begrudge the mayor if he looks smug these days. He earned it. The SRP is his baby; the success or failure of the project will define his place in the city’s history. Now that he is on the threshold of making his first sale, the temptation to taunt his critics will be too hard to resist especially for someone like Tommy.
He has a larger concern, however, and that is to ensure that nobody monkeys around with what he hopes to be his legacy. Thus the choice of successor has acquired an even higher urgency.
Osmeña has repeatedly declared that his heir apparent is none other than his vice mayor, Mike Rama but in politics, no promise is ever made on granite. In the end, it won’t matter that Osmeña gave Rama his word; what would clinch it for Mike would be convincing proof of his ability to win and of his continued loyalty to Tommy.
If he fails any of these tests, it will be goodbye, City Hall for Mike. And welcome, Margot Osmeña or Joy Young?
***
One late night last month, Bobi Madarieta was walking along Hernan Cortes St. in Mandaue on his way home from a joint near the Ayala access road where he had a few drinks with a friend when he was stabbed by an unknown assailant. The attack was so sudden that the victim didn’t have any chance to defend himself.
The attacker fled as quickly as he appeared on the scene, leaving Madarieta lying helplessly on the roadside. He was bleeding profusely from the stab wound on his abdomen but he managed to crawl to where it was not as dark so a passerby could see him. Nobody noticed him, however, or if someone did, he chose to ignore him for fear of getting involved.
Madarieta passed out from the loss of blood (five liters, he would later be told) and was lying unconscious until a good Samaritan spotted him and promptly called ERUF. An ambulance then took him to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center.
That is half the story. The other and more important half (there are many other stabbing or shooting incidents that are more gruesome but do not get noticed much less mentioned in the opinion page) tells about the ironies that people come across at one time or another in their lives.
You see Bobi is the husband (a loving one, according to him) of Dra. Susana K. Madarieta, the Department of Health Central Visayas regional director, whose duties include imposing sanctions or enforcing rules of discipline on government medical personnel in the region.
Not so long ago, Dra. Madarieta ordered the preventive suspension of VSMMC employees who were accused of involvement in the so-called “Black Suede” scandal. The suspension has since been served out and the employees are back to work.
Now guess who attended to Bobi and saved him from the claws of death? None other than the surgeons whose suspension was his wife’s unpleasant duty to order! Ah, life.
