I HAD a break over the weekend with my family and the families of my wife’s brothers and sisters in Asturias town in west Cebu. We spent a big chunk of our time dipping in the waters of the Tañon Strait and eating fish caught by one of the fishermen from Barangay Sta. Lucia. It had been years since I visited Asturias, where one of my brothers live, and the first time I brought my family to its beach. It was a fun experience, including the travel, except for the searing heat.
Toledo City, with former senator John Osmeña now at its helm, has traditionally been the leader of western Cebu’s economic growth but its neighbor, the once backward town of Balamban, is also growing. In this sense, I think the road from that city to Balamban already needs widening. A two-lane main thoroughfare won’t work for those two growing local government units.
Because I was in Asturias and strove not to be distracted by urban buzz, I missed the report on Saturday’s next clash between government troops and Abu Sayyaf members after the one in Inabanga a couple of weeks ago that left three terrorists, an elderly couple, three soldiers and a policeman dead. This time, the clash happened in Clarin town, Inabanga’s neighbor, and killed four Abu group remnants.
It turned out that after the Inabanga clash, the four, including Inabanga native Joselito Melloria, who married a woman from Zamboanga, made their way to a cave in Clarin to evade pursuing government troops. Their presence there was exposed when Melloria, unkempt and in need of a bath, went out to buy bread. The habal-habal driver that brought him to the bakery later tipped the police about him. Hours later the four were dead.
The incident obviously upset their exit plan because by Saturday night, the military arrested Supt. Maria Christina Nobleza, deputy chief of the crime lab in Region II Davao City, and suspected bomb expert Renierlo “Kudri” Dongon aboard a black pickup that didn’t stop at a checkpoint set up in thr aftermath of the Clarin clash. Authorities say they were out to rescue the four Abus that were slain later.
The incident naturally caught public attention, but I frowned upon some of the reactions. I read on Facebook, for example, some people who belittled the Clarin operation because it supposedly was not a result of good intelligewnce work but was something fed on authorities by a habal-habal driver, who volunteered to relay to cops what he observed. But intel info is always based on tips like that.
As for Nobleza’s arrest, I won’t go to the extent of making fun of her supposed relationship with Dongon that even Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Ronald dela Rosa described as “sleeping with the enemy.” If they indeed have a relationship, that is bad. But people fall in love even with the wrong people. Let us not subject that love to judgment like it is something to be derisive about. And it is not only Nobleza, a woman, who succumb to this weakness. Men too. Love is not the crime; the illegal things that those who love do are.
Finally, I hope the arrest would help us find the answer to the question: “What were the Abus really out to do in Bohol?”