SEN. Ronald Dela Rosa insists that Vice President Leny Robredo, who does not have any experience in crime fighting, will fail if she takes over the government’s drug war. Well, the one who is grounded ostensibly in fighting criminality by putting crime suspects away for good, bound by his campaign pledge to end the drug menace in six months and then in a year, today confronts his one huge failure. President Duterte wanted the PNP to go on a killing spree but to become honest and incorruptible, only to find out that the police force could not redeem itself through brutality and ruthlessness The truly grievous mistake the President made was his inability to reform the PNP before ordering it to engage in the drug war.
Robredo must depart from the notion that she looks forward to benefit politically if and when she accepts the dare to be the nation’s drug czar and must first mend fences sincerely with the President, something her political allies may abhor. If she takes on the challenge, she should ask for two years and subordinate herself more to the Chief Executive even if he says he would not interfere. She should expect brickbats from the administration and its allies that she must ignore.
Above all, she must take this as a golden opportunity to honestly help the government to get rid of the drug menace not as a strategic political move but as a genuinely-selfless service. Opposition stalwarts should take a deferential and reconciling stance, instead of engaging in covert political schemes to undermine the Duterte administration. The Vice President should see herself in a better position today in fully assessing the problem and in formulating real solutions.
Homobono Adaza is right. In his FB account, the former assemblyman contends that the drug war has failed from the start due to the absence of analysis that led to the dismal failure of implementation.
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Remembering our dead is reliving our regrets. Many friends and relatives have gone to their eternal rest without any rest in their souls. Until today, families and relatives speak to the tombs of their departed seeking to reconcile themselves with the decaying “earthen jars” inside. Family conflicts are not buried with the dead, they live on, toughened by memories that seem unbreakable like hard tombstones. Open bickering among the Barreto sisters would not have become public theater if the late Barretto patriarch had been determined to reconcile her feuding daughters. He was probably helpless himself because, as it turned out from Marjorie, he was a major source of the family conflict, reportedly the abuser of Gretchen. He stood by while the wounds pestered and deepened with outside intervenors wrecking havoc in their lives. It is only the high-stakes gambler and philanderer Atong Ang who is having the time of his life in this live telerserye.
With his arms around Gretchen, the longtime partner of businessman Tonyboy Cojuangco, Ang would sit sipping his red wine across the stage where Cojuangco often plays with a band at a disco-bar on Jupiter St. in Makati. Ang says Cojuangco is a dear business friend while their friends and bar habitués are aghast on how Ang treats a “dear friend.”
The wife and children of Cojuangco have learned to live with Gretchen as their father’s paramour, along with other women whom he fancies and lavishes with a rich lifestyle.
When they pass away, we are almost sure that two set of eulogies will be conducted during the funerals of Cojuangco and Ang, the open and the silent. Nothing objectionable will be conveyed during the public necro, but the unspoken angst that has dug deep inside will tell of the awful truths of lives broken and stolen by those who could never bring them back together again.
