Wednesday, October 08, 2008 Malilong: Mayor more at peace than we are By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THE news that Mayor Tomas Osmeña has a mass in his urinary bladder that could be life-threatening is indeed jolting but I can’t understand why we have to make it sound so morbid.
Osmeña couldn’t have described the situation for us any better when he said that he could go in 5 or 10 or 20 years. Who knows? The imminence of death is a reality that we face everyday, regardless of our station in life or state of health. Do you think that those who perished in the Princess of the Stars tragedy were any sicker than most of us?
The fact is that we can go anytime as He pleases. The Supreme Court above does not grant any motion for extension.
I wish the mayor well and pray that he lives to be 90, long enough to torment his enemies. I plan to be around when he does so I can record everything for posterity. But if God has other plans, what can we do? As lawyers are wont to tell the judge, “we submit to Your wisdom, Your Honor.”
Unlike most of us, the mayor has already assembled his legacy and earned his place in history. That probably explains why he is more at peace than we are.
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Judge Mary Ann Castro? Why not?
She is a member in good standing of the Philippine Bar, has the required wealth of experience in the practice of law and meets the required age. Most of all, she has human and divine intervention working for her.
Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia’s backing is already a huge advantage. The governor said Castro enjoys her confidence and asked the media and the public not to judge her candidate harshly. That is the human intervention.
The divine intervention was revealed by Castro herself who said she had a vision of the Virgin Mary in 2000 in which she was told that she will be a judge in 2010. Two good years remain before the promised event and with two powerful ladies pushing for her, who dares doubt that she will get her appointment to the bench? It’s written in the stars.
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So the murderer has been set free.
I saw Claudio Teehankee Jr. at least twice at the National Bilibid Prison and was in fact introduced to him. That was when I visited Rep. Nonong Jalosjos, who was serving a sentence for having sex with a minor.
This was early in the decade and at that time there were already talks that Jalosjos would be released. Nonong himself told us so.
It turned out that Teehankee, who I was told always wore a long-sleeved sweat shirt in prison, would walk out of jail free earlier than Jalosjos although the latter did enjoy brief freedom last year on the strength of a release order that was however promptly recalled because of the furor that it created.
I don’t know if Teehankee’s release would raise the same amount of public outcry. He was convicted of the cold-blooded murder of a defenseless young girl, of homicide for the killing of her friend and of frustrated murder for the shooting of another companion.
Whether or not Teehankee is now ready for re-assimilation to the mainstream of society is something that we still have to see. But as Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez has pointed out, it is his boss Mrs. Arroyo’s exclusive prerogative to determine who to grant executive clemency to and when.
