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The Minglanilla police chief was made to explain why he wasn?t around when the President passed by his town for the funeral of Press Secretary Cerge Remonde and got caught in unsupervised traffic. I think it was good for the President to experience what ordinary commuters go through almost every day.
However, the PNP hierarchy is barking up the wrong tree by punishing the police chief instead of addressing the reasons behind the bad traffic in the area.
Many commuters don?t understand why there is traffic congestion in poblacion Minglanilla when the road was widened a long time ago. There must be something wrong with the local government.
It?s easy to identify the factors that cause the congestion: indiscriminate loading and unloading of passengers in front of the plaza and allowing tricycles on the highway.
Tricycle drivers stop for passengers anywhere on the road, mindless of the mess they cause. There is also a national law that prohibits tricycles from traversing highways.
Talisay City has a similar problem. Its local officials have failed to exercise political will to discipline drivers of tricycles, jeepneys and buses. The worst area is Tabunok, from the Gaisano Fiesta Mall all the way to the area under the bridge.
The problem is that local governments have allowed these drivers to keep their old bad habits. The same is true with how the Cebu City government deals with sidewalk vendors, who just make a mockery of the city?s authority to the consternation of the public.
Two weeks ago, the city government cleared the sidewalk at B. Rodriguez Street in front of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center Hospital. Immediately after the dispersal team left, the vendors returned as if nothing had happened. These sidewalk vendors force pedestrians to walk on the outer lanes of the road, which is dangerous.
Worse, some vendors occupy part of the road in front of the hosptial?s entry and exit doors. This causes heavy motor vehicle traffic in the area. Yet nobody in the city government wants to check on the clear defiance of these undisciplined vendors.
I think City Hall has allowed these vendors to defy the law for so long that it is now difficult to remove them from the area. They keep returning because they think the city government isn?t serious about restoring sidewalks to pedestrians.
One of the items on my wish list for whoever becomes the next Cebu City mayor is discipline among the people, not just drivers and sidewalk vendors but everybody. All must follow the law so Cebu City will become a livable city by the highest standard.
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Whatever is happening to Sen. Panfilo ?Ping? Lacson is a great bewilderment. In the last several months, Lacson has been like a person possessed by his vigilance to expose anomalies involving the First Gentleman on the Senate floor. He had heated exchanges with Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, making damaging allegations against former President Erap Estrada.
Lacson was considered a stalwart of the opposition as he methodically exposed the administration?s scandalous deals. He was aptly called he ?hunter of the Senate,? until recently, when the government filed murder charges against him for the murder of publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver.
The senator said he left the country to protect himself from the ?evil conspiracy? by the administration. Now that charges have been filed in court and a warrant for his arrest has been issued, the National Bureau of Investigation is hunting him, and coordinating with Interpol to bring him to justice.
What is interesting is that only Lacson has been charged.
The nagging question is ? who had the motive to order Lacson to kill Bubby Dacer? Why wasn?t former President Estrada included in the charge sheet? Erap had the motive to have Dacer killed because Erap was angry when the videotape showing him in a gambling casino with Atong Ang was made public allegedly by Dacer.
