Angry at attempt to destroy Iloilo City, elected officials

"If you know something is morally reprehensible, then it is your moral obligation to stop it as soon as possible."
--Jane Velez-Mitchell

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- As a true-blooded Ilonggo and community journalist, I will never allow merchants of lies, canards, and chaos to destroy the good name of Iloilo City in the Philippines built by our forefathers.
I will never sit down and act like hackneyed kibitzer while my city and our leaders are being sledge-hammered by purveyors of half-truth, intrigues, and political vendetta.
The most "shabulized" city in the Philippines? Look first at Ozamis, war-torn Marawi, and other big metropolis in Metro Manila where shabu warehouses have yielded billions of worth of illegal substances.
Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog engaged in narco-politics? The cheapest Goebbels-inspired obloquy and hyperbole ever floated with no basis at all in truth, in fact, and in reality! Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
Like any other Ilonggos, I have a moral obligation to defend my city and its leaders--regardless of their political and religious affiliations--from external moronic and destructive yet unfounded accusations and innuendos, which, if left unchallenged and uncorrected, would harm the Ilonggos' moral fiber and create irreparable mayhem on their culture and psyche as peace-loving citizens.
In hours of great moral crisis, we are not supposed to play deaf, blind and mute. The hottest place in hell, according to Dante, is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

NECESSARY

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, exhorted Edmund Burke, is for good men to do nothing.
Ilonggos are decent, educated, religious, intrepid, generous, and humble. They have produced great leaders and contributed abundantly in the political, economic, religious, and cultural evolution of the Filipino race.
If our family, community, culture, morality, values and honor are under attack by a horde of cantankerous and homicidal maniacs, we can't afford to remain neutral.
When we do nothing and think nothing while our reputations are being torn to shreds by voodoo practitioners, pagans, nincompoops, backdoor players, con artists, darkroom operators, spin doctors, dicey crime-busters, rumormongers, and pseudo-moral crusaders, we allow evil to win.
Silence and apathy become our imminent Waterloo.
I love Iloilo City, the "City of Love", the Athens of the Philippines and cradle of heroism and common sense. And I am proud of our folklore and heritage.
I love and support our elected leaders even if I criticize their faults and imperfections. (Some of the public figures who tasted "terror" from my mighty pen were bosom friends if not kumare and kumpare. In journalism, friendship is one thing; commitment to uphold the truth and decency and serve the public through the mass media is another thing.)

HEALTHY

Constructive criticism is healthy in a democratic state. When we criticize our public officials, we don't destroy them. It's not something akin to bullying.
We help locate and discover their errors and shortcomings so they won't repeat the same mistakes again. Criticism helps strengthen our public officials' character and efficiency; and if they are not immature and uncultured, we end up as partners in nation building. 
It is no longer constructive when we wish--and even sharply "pray"--for our public officials' destruction through violent death or assassination over imagined crimes and litany of sins only the ruffians and dolts in the Alfred Hitchcock films are capable of committing.
We have evolved by leaps and bounds since the time when hatred and intrigues were used as basis to execute heads of states and prominent monarchy damsels, queens and kings like Marie Antoinette, falsely accused of uttering "Let them eat cake" when the French people had no more bread to eat.

SOLID

We impeach characters based on remarkable and solid facts, not innuendos and hearsays. We observe due process and acknowledge that after presenting both sides of the coin, only then can we ascertain the chaffs from the grains.
When we are frustrated and not satisfied with our leaders' performance, we don't shoot from the hips and injure bystanders.
Manchester Guardian reminds us that "Comment is free, but facts are sacred."
Even in faraway United States, I continue to chronicle events in our locality from time to time; I have never abandoned my crusade and advocacy for a peaceful community and graft-free government.
As a blogger, columnist and correspondent, I consider myself as an active participant in the modern Agora, which has expanded in the social media since the Oracle of Delphi decreed that Socrates was the wisest person in Athens for helping reform the society as a social, political, and cultural gadfly.

SHIELD

My moral obligation to shield Iloilo City and its leaders from imminent political havoc and moral decay brought by the current dyzzing zarzuela on anti-dope war includes an unflinching committment to shatter the myth of absolutism that pervades the national leadership.
Any overt or covert police raid in any establishment and residential area--owned by a public official or ordinary Juan de la Cruz-- not covered by lawful order or without any legal basis should be considered null and void ab initio.
No amount of hoary justification can supersede the rule of law.
Appeal to the rapscallions in the Philippine National Police and their over-excited minions in the ruling political party: don't do in Iloilo City what you did in Albuera, Leyte and Ozamis City. History will be unkind.

Don't compare Mabilog to Parojinog

"I'm not afraid of death, but I resent it. I think it's unfair and irritating. Every time I see something beautiful, I not only want to return to it, but it makes me want to see other beautiful things. I know I'm not going to get to all the places I want to go."
-- Viggo Mortensen

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- As an Ilonggo (I was born and raised in Iloilo City in the Philippines), I find it revolting to hear some people compare Iloilo City Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog to the slain Ozamis City Mayor Reynaldo “Aldong” Parojinog, Sr.
I find it even more vexing when detractors excitedly parroted that Mabilog would be "the next in line" after Parojinog, who was killed together with his wife, Susan, and 13 others in a dawn raids conducted by the Philippine National Police in the mayor's residence on July 30.
No one can tell exactly why and how Parojinog and his ilk were peppered with bullets except for media reports that they allegedly reacted violently when police raiders tried to issue the search warrants at several of Parojinog's properties in Barangays Baybay San Roque and Baybay Santa Cruz around 2:30 a.m.
Before Parojinog's brutal slaughter, his family was already known nationwide to have been involved allegedly not only in distribution of illegal drugs, but also in other heinous crimes.

MENTIONED

Both Mabilog and Parojinog may have been mentioned by President Rodrigo R. Duterte as among the local chief executives in the Philippines to be allegedly involved in narco politics, but they definitely were not in the same class.
In terms of family background, education, intellect, accomplishments in public service, and values, Mabilog and Parojinog may be oceans apart.
The other difference is it has been established that Duterte had wrongly identified Mabilog as "the cousin of (suspected drug lord Melvin "Boyet) Odicta" while Parojinog belonged to a clan that ostensibly had criminal records (they were allegedly the remnants of the notorious "Kuratong Baleleng" that terrorized Metro Manila with kidnapping for ransom activities in the 90s).
Mabilog is the second cousin of opposition Senator Franklin Drilon, not Odicta.
If Duterte's tipsters could not establish this fundamental information, they have no business to tarnish the reputation of any Tom, Dick and Harry.

FAILURE

A failure in intelligence means these bungling field agents could become a liability instead of assets in the president's campaign against illegal drugs.
There are mayors and even governors in the Philippines who are more blatant and with irrefutable criminal involvement and inclinations, but were never placed in the spotlight or threatened with violent death.
Mabilog has been more deeply involved in civic and religious activities, and was never implicated in any crime even before he became a public servant.
Mabilog's enemies used his "friendship" with another suspected drug lord Jingjing Espinosa (who is now in jail for frustrated murder) as the basis to link him in narco-politics.
Mabilog comes from a decent and respected religious family in Molo district. He had or still has a foundation that helps the poor, the youth, and the senior citizens.

IMPLICATE

To implicate him in illegal drugs is like implicating Desdemona in Lago's plot to kill Emilia in Othello.
Mabilog's aggressive campaign against illegal drugs belies all the innuendos that he is into narco politics. Their lies defy the logic.
The vicious issue or issues being levelled against Mabilog were unheard of when he was first elected as city councilor, vice mayor, and now city mayor on his last term. It was politics or his links with the opposition, especially to Drilon, that gave him the albatross.
After Parojinog's assassination, some of Mabilog's detractors were so excited to push him in line of Duterte's death list.
Do these characters really want Mabilog dead because they are convinced he is evil?
Or they only want to reaffirm and marshal their hatred and bitterness toward the man because of his stunning political success, and use the precarious situation he is in today to satisfy and fulfill their whims and caprices?