Pet Melliza

The Beekeeper BY PET MELLIZA It's not the ideal time to get sick and be hospitalized nowadays with private and public medical facilities filled beyond capacity. The district hospital at Guimbal, Iloilo had to erect a tent; even its corridors can't accommodate additional patients. So far, the accumulated figure of dengue cases since january in Iloilo Province alone, excluding Iloilo City, went above 2,500 with 13 deaths, which is still better than 1996 when the death toll shot above 50, mostly children. This year, the Philippine Science High School at Jaro, Iloilo City, shut down for a week for fogging operation after a dozen of its students were infected by dengue. We don't know how successful the procedur was. The Department of Health scorns fogging because it does more harm than good; while it may help eliminate a generation of mosquitos, it does not the eggs which will hatch and spread the terror anew. Fogging contains chemicals toxic not only to Aege...

The Beekeeper BY PET MELLIZA Virginia Palanca-Santiago’s exercise of raw power (19) Lawyer Roming Gerochi has one word for the Office of the Ombudsman – “Monalisa”, an old ditty popularized by Matt Monroe and Frank Sinatra. He said that in one episode of “Kape kag Isyu”, a cable TV talks show aired live on Sky Cable every Saturday at 9 – 10 am. Many dreams have been brought to the doorstep of Monalisa but “they just lie there and they die there.” Virginia Palanca-Santiago, assistant ombudsman for the Visayas and chief of its W. Visayas regional office based in Iloilo City, is now in town preaching public accountability on elective local officials. Many cases have also been brought to the doorsteps of Virginia Palanca-Santiago and they, too, just lie and die there. The moral pygmy whose sense of right and wrong is as revolting as her looks being tasked to promote public accountability? That sounds like Pangulong Erap pontificating on marital fidelity. Gerochi threatened to sling mandamu...

The Beekeeper By Pet Melliza Defy the church IF Fray Butod — the quintessential symbol of the patriarchal, despotic, conservative, reactionary and backward sector of religion usurping the title “The Church” – ordered me to go forth and multiply and reject birth control practices, shall I say amen? If Fray Butod threatened me with eternal damnation in hell or excommunication in life shall I cringe? Before answering those queries, let’s journey back to the past. One conclusion we can glean from it is that humanity gained giant strides in all spheres of knowledge that translate to unprecedented progress. Today, by tapping the keyboard or mouse of your PC, in matter of seconds we can communicate to people in different parts of the world, we can access information at such speed and efficiency never before imagined. Humanity progressed not because of the conservative, patriarchal and reactionary faction of religion, most often its hierarchy and having the temerity to dub itself “The ...

The Beekeeper BY PET MELLIZA Hostage drama culture of arrogance We grieve with the families killed and wounded in the botched rescue attempt of the PNP. I may be dumb but at least I am not as stupid as idiots in PNP SWAT uniform, “Manila’s Finest” who mishandled the hostage-drama at Quirino Grandstand, Luneta last August 23. This is one maxim we can coin at the manner the supposed rescuers led the victims to their tragic end, eight dead and seven injured, all Chinese nationals, when the smoke of the rescue settled down. We were watching the drama unfold at Tibsrock resto, at Mandurriao and felt like smashing a beer bottle on to the empty head of whoever ordered the arrest of SPO2 Gregorio Mendoza, brother of hostage taker, Rolando Mendoza, a former police senior inspector. The arresting officers simply roughed him up in full view of viewers of the live coverage worldwide, including the hostage-taker himself. We are baffled how the non-commissioned police officer was arrested sa...

The Beekeeper By Pet Melliza Defy the church IF Fray Butod — the quintessential symbol of the patriarchal, despotic, conservative, reactionary and backward sector of religion usurping the title “The Church” – ordered me to go forth and multiply and reject birth control practices, shall I say amen? If Fray Butod threatened me with eternal damnation in hell or excommunication in life shall I cringe? Before answering those queries, let’s journey back to the past. One conclusion we can glean from it is that humanity gained giant strides in all spheres of knowledge that translate to unprecedented progress. Today, by tapping the keyboard or mouse of your PC, in matter of seconds we can communicate to people in different parts of the world, we can access information at such speed and efficiency never before imagined. Humanity progressed not because of the conservative, patriarchal and reactionary faction of religion, most often its hierarchy and havi...

The Beekeeper BY PET MELLIZA Virginia Palanca-Santiago's exercise of raw power (18) Virginia Palanca-Santiago's unusual haste to “solve” the case People's Graftwatch of Iloilo versus jaime Esmeralda, et al, invites suspicion. Even while the answer of Esmeralda et al were in transitu to Cebu, they already received a six-month preventive suspension order dated March 14, 2005. It was signed by then Ombudsman for the Visayas Primo Miro but there is strong reason to believe that it was the handiwork of his assistant, Virginia Palanca-Santiago, who was already Western Visayas Director of the office based in Iloilo City. At that time, Miro, already too debilitated by an illness aggravated by his alcohol habit, was no longer in charge. He had one trait – he could not write a single English sentence without incurring a hundred crimes against grammar and logic. The one de facto running the show than was Virginia Palanca-Santiago. There were far more grave cases...

The Beekeeper BY PET MELLIZA Virginia Palanca-Santiago's exercise of raw power (17) Virginia Palanca-Santiago, the woman who should be addressed to as “Honorable” being the assistant ombudsman for the Visayas and concurrently, regional director of the Office of the Ombudsman in Western Visayas, scarcely shows her face in Iloilo these days. Further, her office no longer accepts my pleadings; her subordinates told me to mail them directly to the Cebu office on the lame excuse that receiving pleadings at the Iloilo office “affect” the reglamentary period of responding to pleadings. I don't know how receiving documents by the Iloilo office reduces the reglamentary period. In this IT age, Virginia Palanca-Santiago can make use of the internet, fax machine or telephone in transmitting the contents of any pleading. Besides, the Iloilo office has an in-house lawyer to answer the pleading in her behalf. We are inclined to suspect that the reason why the Iloilo office of the Ombudsman no...