PRESIDENT Duterte’s secret weapon of mass distraction is a crowned beauty who got married only last March to a Maranaoan.
Named after a famously voluptuous Italian actress, Sophia Loren Deliu is a policewoman – she’s not PSG (Presidential Security Group) – who is now the President’s close-in aide. PSG or PNP, the mission for which she’s trained is to take a bullet for her principal, should circumstances require.
A certain type of woman may (want to) look like a damsel in distress when there are brave men around, but beautiful women can be dangerous, as in femmes fatales.
Distracting or self-destructing? A number of candidates were disqualified by Comelec as being nuisances. They may have shown a tendency to be low on their political IQ but they scored high on their honesty and sincerity quotient. At least Comelec allowed us to enjoy the antics of orators, jesters, and crackpots on the day they filed their certificates of candidacy. Was it so hard for voters to imagine why they were so desperate to want to serve their country? At least they showed their true colors, without guile.
As deadly as our elections can get, the more-fun-in-the-Philippines branding applies to the carnival atmosphere, the vaudeville trimmings, the show-what-you’ve-got one-upmanship, maybe even a Halloween-like creepiness when politically motivated killings cast a long shadow on democracy’s virtues.
Whether Juan Ponce Enrile likes it or not, his seniority and intellectual superiority at age 94 have earned him more radio-TV time and column centimeters in print media than his haters can take. The problem with JPE is the quality of mind of those trying to get into the Senate – would any of them dare to debate with him on the US-China trade war, inflation, currencies, global warming, geopolitics, military history? Remember what the take-charge guy said, “The problem with us type-A’s is those type-B’s.”
October, breast cancer awareness month, ends tomorrow. Pure coincidence, nothing morbid about it, but the day after tomorrow is All Saints’ Day. Dr. Norman San Agustin, whose career in the US spanned decades, delivers a strong message from his ambulatory clinic – it’s not a hospital – in Makati. Breast cancer when detected early saves the patient and her money, about P230,000, against the stage 3-4 procedures that cost P2 to P3 million, not always with salutary results.
