‘Finger-pointing’

Idon’t like it when someone points a finger at me. Of course, I’m saying that calmly now because my former editor-in-chief had reminded me, way back when, that a gentleman from SunStar Cebu’s editorial department should never resort to tawdry behavior.

It has been almost two decades since that incident happened, so you could say that I have moved on. Somewhat.

I honestly don’t know how I’d react if, say, I’m on the receiving end of somebody else’s finger today.

Of course, I did not make the mistake of asking a regular patron with a corporate account to log in when going up to a room in the hotel I work in like I would an escort. (Even though, I would never do that to an escort.)

Which, allegedly, is standard procedure at a Lahug hotel when they see a male guest with a female companion, and I assume the establishment only does this after midnight, and after it has profiled the “friend.”

So I guess hotel detective Welbert Pepito did not expect Mabolo Barangay Captain Prisca Niña Mabatid to react the way she did when he allegedly asked her to do this when she and her partner Ramon Floresta tried to go up to their room in the wee hours of last June 19.

Pepito probably thought he was just doing his job, although I really doubt he would do that to Kris Aquino if she arrived with some guy in tow.

Mabatid told SunStar Cebu’s Rona Joyce T. Fernandez that a lot of things come to mind when she wonders how people would perceive or remember her.

“(Pero)

wa ko ka-imagine nga usa ko sa maaan nga pokpok

(But I never imagined I would be mistaken for a prostitute),” she said.

What happened next was seen by nearly a million people, with over 3,000 reactions and shared more than 500 times on Facebook.

I don’t know who uploaded the footage of the incident, which was caught on the hotel’s security camera, but I assume it was someone from the hotel with the hotel’s consent.

But as Mabatid lamented, we could only see the confrontation, but we could not hear what was going on.

“He (Pepito) wanted me to log in because escorts brought by hotel guests are required to log in. My action was just a result of their action as well. I was not treated well. I was mistaken as an escort and that is really a big foul,” she said.

But there’s no denying that Mabatid’s finger was very busy during that three-minute footage, and that her friend Floresta “touched” Pepito and duty manager Irene Lacerna and also “poked” the former with his foot.

The last time someone pointed their finger at me, they claimed to be a vice president of so and so to which I replied,

“Unsay gusto nimo, pakpakan?”