Will lightning strike twice in city hall?

“If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”

--Thomas J. Watson

By Alex P. Vidal

NEWARK, New Jersey -- An illiterate but patriotic public servant is as dangerous as the corrupt public servant.

The only difference is, corrupt public servants are really the real menace to society.

The illiterate will mismanage the government. The corrupt, on the other hand, will impoverish the nation.

The country can easily rebound from the doldrums of mismanagement.

If public coffers have been emptied by corrupt public servants, every citizen or member of the family will suffer from a hodgepodge of government neglect and dispossession.
Former Supreme Court Chief Justice and Senate President Hilario Davide prefers the illiterate over the corrupt.
I reject both.

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THE presence of Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque in the 50^th Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo City in the Philippines on January 28, 2018 didn’t sit well with those wishing to oust Mayor Jose “Joe III” Espinosa III before the May 2019 elections.

Roque, President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s representative during the festival’s final day, reportedly conveyed the President’s message of support for the festival’s golden edition.

Roque’s gesture could be interpreted that everything is well between Malacanang and Iloilo City Hall in as far as political relationship is concerned.

Those who believed that “stubborn” Mayor Joe III may have committed a serious gaffe by his refusal to recall the much-criticized executive order that closed a portion of Rizal Street in Plaza Jaro in connection with the Feast of Our Lady of the Candles Nuestra Señora de la Purificacion y Candelaria on February 2, however, think the city mayor is ripe for a kill.

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CRITICS surmise the city mayor can be eliminated through a case for “violation” of anti-graft practices act before the Office of the Ombudsman and, thus, suffer the fate of his predecessor, Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog.

They suspect his much-ballyhooed “cordial” relationship with the hard-hitting President from Davao City is a myth or like a bubble that can explode anytime.

They viewed President Duterte’s non-appearance in the Dinagyang Festival as a tell-tale sign that the President’s relationship with the City Hall has remained frosty even after Mabilog’s overthrow.

They are apparently cynical on a scenario of President Duterte coming to Mayor Joe III’s rescue in the event the city mayor will end up facing the slammer.

And if ever a case of that nature be marshaled against Mayor Joe III, it would most likely come from former Iloilo provincial administrator Manuel Mejorada, author of the Ombudsman case that toppled Mabilog last year.

If Mejorada is convinced that Mayor Joe III really violated the law when he defended and sustained his controversial Jaro Plaza road edict, the former capitol bigwig probably must be hoping that lightning will strike anew in the Iloilo City Hall.    

Incidentally, Roque is Mejorada’s former legal counsel in the latter’s libel cases filed by Senator Franklin Drilon.

His other legal counsel is Atty. Eduardo Jalbuna, former president of the Iloilo Press Club (IPC).