By: Jullie Y. Daza
IT wasn’t funny then and it isn’t funny now, to hear of scalawags in uniform being sent to Mindanao (then) and Marawi (now) as punishment.
A rotten apple infects and contaminates the others in the barrel. But sending two PO1’s to Marawi to punish them for the nonstop beating of an alleged drunk in a police station in Mandaluyong is poisoning the reputation of policemen and Special Action Forces who have been heroically battling the terrorists there for over a month now. Marawi is not a joke, it should not be bandied as a stigma, not as a form of torture, certainly not as a joke! Marawi represents sacrifice, the blood, sweat, and tears of soldiers and policemen who have done nothing to be associated with police brutality, stupidity, lunacy, etc.
How could PNP Generals De la Rosa and Albayalde agree to such nonsense and besmirch the honor of those who’ve just recently rescued the name of the Philippine National Police from a long tenure of ignominy? The cop who whipped the suspect, as well as the other cop who looked on without doing anything, should be stripped of their benefits, shamed in public, deposited in an NPA-infested area before being sent to the gallows.
Just as nonsensical as a “Marawi solution” is the threat of the new MMDA chairman, also a general, to impose a two-day ban on vehicles to solve the traffic crisis. Number coding began as an “experiment” during FVR’s time, under a general. Fast-forward to 2017, when a legislator proposed a three-day coding (and triggered wild speculations that he had 21 cars in his garage), followed by the MMDA gm’s two-day coding, which was thankfully rejected by the mayors of Metro Manila.
Ban cars as the cause of traffic, ban matrimony because it’s the leading cause of divorce! With problem solvers like what we have, who needs traffic management or MMDA, LTO-LTFRB, DILG, HPG, DPWH, DoTr – let’s ban the sale and use of cars, problem solved.