FORMER Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña offers a glimpse of his defense to the alleged vandalism on the office he vacated at City Hall: (1) He stripped it of his personal belongings and (2) He was about to restore it to its state before he renovated it in 2016 but his contractor was stopped by city officials. No malicious vandalism.
The first part Tomas had repeatedly presented before. He was just getting the properties he personally owned. The second part is new, which aims to explain the gutting of the office, removing tiles, electrical wires and the like.
The former mayor reportedly requested, in a July 19 letter to his successor Edgar Labella that the Tomas-hired construction crew be allowed to “continue” its work of making the office look the way it was before he renovated it three years ago.
Neat but not so neat: the stitch shows.
Lawyer says no rape
THE NBI filed two years ago the complaint against Juril Patiño, identified in a news story as a lawyer who handled a program at Brigada News FM in Cebu City, for the rape of a girl, 13, inside his car in Barangay Parian, Cebu City. He was arrested only last Monday, July 22.
Atty. Juril’s s defense to the complaint filed with the city prosecutor’s office two weeks after the alleged rape: the girl never got inside his car. His wife’s defense: her husband is “too good of a person to do what he is accused of.”
The court warrant for his arrest was issued July 23, 2018 for a crime that was allegedly committed on July 13, 2017. And he was arrested July 22, 2019.
The lawyer-broadcaster might wish for a different month, not July, when the decision after trial is promulgated.
Have you tried 8888?
President Duterte in Monday’s state-of-the nation-address said he’d like to see the day when people no longer use the Malacañang hotline quadruple “8.” Being “freed” of the need to call the palace means government agencies are already performing well.
First, many persons still have to check out the number. Second, they must use it only if the national agency in Cebu or in other local places fails. Third, people must not dump garbage request on Malacañang. (“Garbage” here refers not to physical trash but unwanted complaint that is trivial, baseless, or silly. Even City Hall does not deserve that kind of complaint.)
Records of hotline complaints in many countries show “abuse and stupidity” of people using the emergency service.
The 8888 hotline is “open 24 hours,” Duterte said, if the complaint is true (“kung totoo”) and involves corruption.
Were you listening?
Check out if you got some highlights of the 2019 Sona right:
[1] For which crimes, does Duterte want the death penalty to be restored?
[2] What does he guarantee, swearing “upon the grave of my father,” about corruption?
[3] His reason for extending term of barangay and SK officials by two years, until 2022.
[4] The bank that he bashed, unfairly since the basis was fact-checked to be untrue.
[5] “No sacred cow” in punishing what?
(1. Heinous crimes related to drugs and plunder. 2. No corruption on third Telco. 3. “To rectify the truncated terms.” 4. Land Bank. 5. Corruption: “not for relationship, friendship, or alliance.”)
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