Mercado: Rubbing patience raw
HOW long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?” Cicero erupted in 63 BC at the Roman Senate against a tyrant plotting subversion.
“Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?” fits exchanges between Rep. Tomas Osmeña and Mayor Mike Rama on the panic, triggered by false...
Mercado: Blistering summers
CEBU areas, flooded by abnormal downpours in October and December, are dry. Evacuation centers for typhoon “Sendong flood victims are emptying. Front pages focus on the Chief Justice's impeachment.
But Summer 2012 could be blistering, long---and permanent. The equatorial “band of rain”...
Mercado: Fairy tales and fables?
WILL Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Kim Henares be to Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona’s impeachment what banker Clarissa Ocampo was for president Joseph Estrada’s impeachment?
Strait-jacket Henares’s testimony into merely confirming Corona income tax receipts (ITR...
Mercado: End or beginning?
GOV. Gwendolyn Garcia tiptoes into a touchy transition phase. She’s ending three terms as Cebu’s first woman governor. Does national office loom for this sprightly, often-short-fused, 57-year old executive?
“To make an end is to make a beginning,” T.S. Eliot wrote. “The end is where we...
Mercado: Three Cebuanos
OMBUDSMAN Conchita Carpio-Morales ordered the filing of murder charges against 10 Navy officers for killing 24-year-old Ensign Philip Pestaño, Sun.Star reported Friday. She directed their dismissal from the service.
“It was on Oct. 6, 1995 when the ensign’s father first sought the...
Mercado: Sitting ducks
SUPPOSE Typhoon Sendong didn’t swerve at the last minute,” a friend from Jakarta emailed. “Assume it barreled thru as Pagasa first forecast. The storm would have smashed Cebu instead of northern Mindanao. What would be the results?”
He answered his own question. “Cebu’s deforested hills...
Mercado: Will singing bird come?
ON New Year, many fret over the future. Cebuanos have no monopoly on being spooked. In Shakespeare’s 1605 play “Macbeth,” Banquo urges the spirits: "If you can look into the seeds of time, and say/ which grain will grow and which will not/ speak then unto me.”
Peering into the future is...
Mercado: Peering into the future
IF it is to remain “Queen City of the South,” Cebu must make the decision now “to re-invent itself,” as weather events become more extreme, cautions a new study that peers 30 years into the future. “Now is the time to re-think, rework and re-tool…for a climate-defined future.”
Bank of the...
Mercado: Policy myopia
IN which city did scientists track, for over 28 years, the birth, growth, schooling, jobs, illnesses, marriages of 3,080 kids, to help craft policy? Cebu City officials haven’t the faintest idea.
But University of San Carlos’s “Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey” (LHNS) recast...
Mercado: ‘A great wind blowing?’
WHAT a difference an honest Ombudsman makes. You doubt that? Ask Lapu-Lapu City’s Rep. Arturo Radaza.
He dodged with ease, over the last six years, raps for buying 470 computers overpriced by 116 percent. Now, new Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales ordered the former Lapu-Lapu City mayor...
Mercado: Carol thieves, bullies
SILENT Night is my favorite carol,” says our grand-daughter Kathie, 5. “I also like Kasadya Ning Takna-a,” adds her sister Kristin, 8.
Vicente D. Rubi composed “Kasadya” for the 1933 Cebu Carnival. Mariano Vestil scribbled the lyrics. Their daygon won hands down. A Manila recording...
Mercado: ‘No basta decir adios’
IT’S not enough to say goodbye.” That sums up former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s failed bid to board a flight-–any flight-–out at week’s end.
She needed urgent medical treatment abroad, GMA told the Supreme Court. Her appointees on the Court forthwith granted a temporary...
Mercado: Those off-key carols
THE first signs are there. Vendors heft multi-colored parols or star lanterns. To cadge a few coins, scrawny kids warble carols, banging flattened bottle caps. “Kasadya Ning Takna-a” leads in street corner songbooks.
Vicente Rubi composed the music for the carol entry in 1933 Cebu...
Mercado: Squandering tomorrow
THE future is city-centric,” says a new Asian Development Bank study on today’s “urbanization avalanche.” So, are bickering Cebu City officials squandering our grandchildren’s tomorrows?
Look at Friday’s walkout of City Hall department heads. The 20 vamoosed, as the council discussed the...
Mercado: No erasures list
THAT'S how the wife and I dub it. We jot down names of departed kith and kin for inclusion in All Souls’ Day mass. “No traveler returns…from this undiscovered country,” Hamlet muttered. No erasures possible here.
The years, however, dull name recall. We remember the gentle editor Cornelio...
Mercado: Cups O’ Java
HOW does a man differ from swine? In his capacity to feel shame, we learned in Ethics 101. “He that is shameless is graceless.”
Philippine Earth Justice Center’s Gloria Estenzo-Ramos did not tell Cebu City officials to quit playing hog. Instead, she wrote a firm letter to Mayor Michael...
Mercado: Poker chip mummy
PRESIDENT Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III nixed graveyard volleys, horse-drawn caisson, taps, etc. for an overdue funeral of the late Ferdinand Marcos. The dictator’s corpse has been embalmed for over 22 years now, ala Mao Ze Dong.
Then President Fidel Ramos agreed to return of Marcos’s...
Mercado: 1,928 ‘parables’
THE drunk uses lampposts for support, not for light.” That old saw resurfaces in Mayor Michael Rama’s fed-up outburst: Raze those 1,928 overpriced, now gutted, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit lampposts. Failing that, convert them into flower pots.
Would that make...
Mercado: No bamboo reeds
DO NOT look at the heavens through a bamboo reed,” a Japanese proverb counsels.
That fits the storm kicked up by the experimental “Road Revolution” in Cebu City.
Mercado: Where vultures gather
THIS one is for Ripley’s ”Believe It Or Not.” Over 400 so-called “media representatives” cram Manila’s customs beat, writes columnist Boo Chanco. This “Customs press corps” is seven times foreign and local reporters accredited by Malacañang. It equals 408 newspapers (32 are dailies) in the...
Mercado: Graveside volleys
WEDNESDAY is the 39th anniversary of martial law imposition. To save the Republic, freedoms must be curtailed, Ferdinand Marcos said. He didn’t bat an eyelash. A 14-year dictatorship followed. After People Power restored freedoms, did nationwide amnesia set in?
An exhaustive analysis is...
Mercado: Facts as tutor
“FACTS are facts,” Indian statesman Jawharlal Nehru wrote. “They’ll not disappear on account of your likes.” Compare the facts on two water-stressed cities: Cebu and Singapore. Are you set for a jolt?
Mercado: Rain as grace
“A MAN will fight over three things,” Sen. Barry Goldwater wrote. “Water, women and gold--in that order.” That sequence resonates in House of Representatives’ Resolution No. 1573.
Mercado: Council theme song?
CEBU City’s 2011 political brawls recall the 1956 Platter’s schmaltzy song: “The Great Pretender.” In one corner is Mayor Mike Rama and allies. In the other corner is a City Council that proxies for Rep. Tomas Osmeña--whose legislative performance won’t make the history books. “All are experts...
Mercado: Struggle against forgetting
OUR paths crossed, for the last time at San Francisco International Airport. The family and I were flying, via Cebu, to my United Nations duty station in Bangkok. Former senator Benigno Aquino was booked on a Boston flight. Our final chat comes to mind on the 28th anniversary of his murder today...
