MIWD directors: Damn if you do, damn if you don't

"Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma."
--Hendrik Willem Van Loon

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- We can't blame the members of the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD) board if they continued to ignore the order of Iloilo City Mayor Jose "Joe III" Espinosa III to vacate their posts.
They are in a "damn-if-you-do, damn-if-you-don't" situation.
If they vacate, they can be charged with abandonment. After all, they assumed their posts through a proper process and procedure.
And they are all qualified for the job.
If they continue to stay, the city mayor will invoke strong legal arguments to justify their removal. They will be forcefully hounded by a city hall demand to resign.
They will be caught between the devil and the deep blue see, so to speak.
Mayor Joe III insisted that the appointments of Dr. Juanito Acanto, Atty. Josephine Caram, Dr. Jessica Salas, Dr. Teodoro Robles, and businessman Ramon Cua-Locsin by Iloilo Gov. Arthur Defensor Sr. are "void ab initio" based on the SC decision.
Mayor Joe III invoked as the basis for his order a recent Supreme Court (SC) en banc ruling on a case in Cebu City, which, if applied in Iloilo City, will give the city mayor the power to appoint the MIWD directors.
The city mayor has issued a Cautionary/Cease and Desist Order against the MIWD directors. He wants to appoint the new directors.
The MIWD directors, however, have defied Mayor Joe III even as their lawyers led by MIWD legal counsel Roy Villa have asked the city mayor to go to court.
Mayor Joe III can't appoint the new MIWD directors because there are no vacant seats, the lawyers have argued.
If he goes to court and begin the legal debate in the proper forum, Mayor Joe III, a lawyer, will have the upper hand if he believes he is right.
If he won't and will continue his saber-rattling only in the media, he can't physically remove the MIWD directors who are also invoking their own legal standpoint and rights to justify their stay.

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Grandstanding Senator Juan Miguel "Migz" Zuburi has decried the "horrendous" airfare ticket prices in a recent Senate hearing on the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL), but did not name which airline and how much were the ticket prices involved.
His sweeping accusation could hurt the airline industry unless he will provide details of his allegation.
It's easy to read between the lines.
Some people suspect that Zubiri only wanted to disclose  that some Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) resource persons had approached him to solicit for their airfares.
In other words, he wanted to embarrass those resource persons in a subtle manner.