—Honore de Balzac
By Alex P. Vidal
NOW that Mommy Lydia Grabato, the mayor of Mina, Iloilo had spoken regarding the case of her 43-year-old son, Rey II (namesake of the mayor’s husband), charged together with several others in an alleged $650 million Ponzi scheme in New Jersey, USA, the public should give the beleaguered family the benefit of the doubt.
Mother and father—and, perhaps, the entire Grabato family—believe their son, who had seizures several times this year, according to his mother, is innocent.
Surprisingly, the lady mayor didn’t allow her son to speak on the controversy, which has rapidly spread through the Internet news.
In her statement as reported by the Daily Guardian and Panay News over the weekend, her son, who is home in Mina, Iloilo couldn’t comment on the issue as “it is being investigated.”
She didn’t explain though why she was free to speak about the case that “is still being investigated” while her son, who is the one involved, couldn’t.
The act of baby-sitting a son in the gigantic scandal maybe the best option for a worried and loving mother, but public opinion will always have a different version.
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Anyway, the Grabatos ostensibly believe in the rule of law as the lady mayor agreed to let her son face the case once they have received the documents from the US court.
An 18-count indictment has been filed against the son Grabato and his alleged accomplice, Thomas Nicholas Salzano, 64, who was already arrested, it was reported.
Both Grabato and Salzano were top officials of the National Realty Investment Advisors, a high-profile company based in Secaucus, New Jersey.
The Ponzi-like scheme ran by the company since 2006 allegedly defrauded roughly 2,000 investors as well as dodged $26 million in IRS taxes.
The mother Grabato had insisted during the interview with the Daily Guardian and Panay News her son is considered “resigned” or was no longer connected with the company even before he underwent a head surgery after a car accident in the US also early this year.
We don’t know if the court will allow or consider any act of leniency and compassion on the case of the Grabato son, who was injured in the traffic mishap and needed to be taken away by her parents from New Jersey to Mina, Iloilo, to be given the much-needed attention from his family.
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WITH barely three days before the All Souls Day, killer typhoon “Paeng” (tropical storm Nalgae) was able to snatch away 45 lives in the Philippines and destroyed millions worth of agriculture products as of this writing.
That means an additional 45 or more families will go to the cemetery for the 45 or more dead on All Souls Day this year.
Some of the dead may not even be buried on All Souls Day; there are missing bodies that may not be located in the next two to three weeks or beyond.
The number of casualties could go up when the disaster coordinating councils nationwide have finalized their reports.
The recent typhoon was one of a kind because it lambasted not only one, two or three regions, but the entire archipelago and flooded many areas in Western Visayas for the very first time like what happened in Antique.
Times have changed and the weathers anywhere all over the world continue to deteriorate in alarming scale as a result of the climate change. Even typhoons—strong or minimal—are now being attached on the pesky climate change.
Aside from climate change, we also have the global warming or the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.
This term is not interchangeable with the term "climate change."
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JOURNALISTS murdered outside Imperial Manila weren’t accorded the same treatment of police investigation now being done in the case of murdered Manila tough-talking broadcaster Percival “Percy Lapid” Mabasa.
Because the crime, which happened on October 3 in Las Pinas City, has become an international sensation in as far as the issue of press freedom is concerned, all government agencies are chipping in the effort to solve the senseless killing, or to identify the mastermind or masterminds now that the triggerman, his cohorts and the middlemen have been reportedly known.
Even the embattled Justice Secretary Boying Remulla has found the issue a perfect opportunity to divert the public attention from the case of his 37-year-old son recently arrested and charged for importation of marijuana.
The reason is simple: Manila journalists have always been known as “national figures” thus the attention given them is different from the “promdi” journalists harassed or killed in as far as investigation is concerned.
Most of the murdered journalists in the Philippines were from the provinces or cities in the Visayas and Mindanao and, in many cases, the investigations were in snail pace thus only a few cases had been solved.
In the case of Mabasa, 63, apparently only a few stones need to be turned and the masterminds will be unmasked and, possibly, charged in court.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo.—Ed)
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