Apology not enough

ONE can understand the anguish the parents of Jose Antonio Sanvicente Jr. when a video of his totally irresponsible driving incident two weeks ago went viral. The video was also widely shown on television and became the big story the following week.

Days passed, during which one would expect the police to have immediately arrested the erring driver of a vehicle whose ownership was easy to trace.

But no, the police tweedled, and virtually did little other than to admit they had already identified the driver.

Ten days after, Junior went to police headquarters along with parents and a lawyer. He apologized, saying he was rattled, panicked, confused, such that he ran over the security guard after he had bumped the poor guy.

His mother tearfully pleaded for public understanding, and kissed the hand of an approaching PNP chief, whose desire to be so appointed awaits the act of the incoming president.

That “mano po” again went viral, eliciting various negative reactions, considering the 10 days of hiding Junior Sanvicente did before he voluntarily appeared.

Strangely, the police did not detain Junior, stating that no charges were filed, and therefore, no warrant for his arrest authorized them to do so.

The “modus” unravels. After the hit-andrun incident, wealthy parents called a lawyer, who must have advised them and their junior to bide sweet time.

“Aregluhin na lang natin yung biktima,” the lawyer must have counseled. Meanwhile, an entire week passed, so no arrest warrant was issued.

That’s standard practice among the rich after they commit wrongdoings against a poor individual. But what about the police institution? Were they also pressured, and if so, by whom? Or were they persuaded in a “friendly” manner?

Meanwhile, as SP Tito Sotto wondered, “what is happening to our country?”, and protested the obvious disconnect between law and order for the rich versus the common man.

Where and when in these benighted isles can the common man get a fair shake, let alone justice from those sworn to do so?

In Vietnam, meanwhile, authorities filed charges of corruption and grand larceny against the mayor of the capital, Hanoi, and the Minister of Health, among other officials, for grossly and unlawfully overpricing the purchase and distribution of pandemic supplies. These are not ordinary government functionaries; they are even high party officials in the socialist regime.

Here in the Philippines, several senators refused to sign the Blue Ribbon Committee report on the Pharmally scandal, so that the same could be taken up in plenary.

Not a case of “with reservations,” but outright refusal to sign. In other words, “kill” the committee report of a worthy senator who recently got an overdose of presidential rage, which may have caused his failure to be re-elected.

The “mastermind” was never detained. His protectors or confreres in high or low public office neither. And two underlings of the Chinese mastermind were released from detention after several months.

And nobody expects anybody to be tried before the courts of law.

Which reminds me of the fertilizer scandal in 2004 that made the Department of Agriculture outdo the DPWH as the “gold standard” in bureaucratic corruption.

The supposed mastermind has been exonerated by the Sandiganbayan, while up to the present, several DA regional directors who merely followed orders from the top to download the funds to LGUs are still fending off a multitude of charges, their retirement pensions gone to lawyers’ fees, and a few have already died.

The Commission on Audit dunned the Nayong Pilipino Foundation for having misspent hundreds of millions of money supposed to be in escrow because a lease of national government property entrusted to it by a former president in the Entertainment City was deemed improper by Pres. Duterte.

The lessee had already paid advance rentals to Nayong Pilipino for a long-term lease contract signed and “perfected” over property between the Okada and Solaire casino hotels.

Meanwhile, as construction could not proceed and the questioned lease remains in limbo, officials of the obsolete and useless government agency attached to the Tourism department quietly spent hundreds of millions in what COA deems unwarranted and questionable expenses.

While nobody was looking, and the case seems to have been forgotten, some “bright” guys made hay.

Truth is, Nayong Pilipino should be abolished, and properties assigned to it, such as in the Entertainment City and in the Clark Ecozone, entrusted to other agencies with a real reason to exist and a useful mandate to perform.

I cannot understand why some rabid supporters of the pink legion and their Santa Leni till now refuse to bring down the pink parols that festoon the front of their houses or business establishments. They probably will keep these Christmas ornaments until the next holiday season.

A bakeshop which we used to patronize for their cakes and pastries still has the store and adjoining property festooned with those pink lanterns.

Enough na; tama na.

Even that bastion of yellow fever, St. Scholastica’s College run by Benedictine sisters has finally removed at end-May the hundreds of pink lanterns that adorned their entire fence from one block to the next.

Olats na, guys! Accept reality, and move on, hopefully forward.

Jose Antonio Sanvicente Jr.’s mother tearfully pleaded for public understanding, and kissed the hand of an approaching PNP chief, whose desire to be so appointed awaits the act of the incoming president