The ugly side of Sinulog exposed!

While we wrote about the good things that the Sinulog Grand Festival has brought to Cebu City and Cebu province for the whole week that the Cebu Fiesta was celebrated, I submit that we also had our share of the negatives. For instance, that children’s parties at the Jollibee outlet in Ayala Center seem to be a favorite target of snatchers. As we’ve said, while the procession for the Señor Sto. Niño was underway, a young girl snatcher took the pendant of a Korean boy, a classmate of my grandson. Later a guard told us that this was not the first time petty criminals had made their move inside the Jollibee in Ayala, and I’m sure that incident won’t be the last.

We reported last Monday that as of press time on Sunday, there were no untoward incidents while the Grand Sinulog Parade was going on, but after it was over, I practically got a ringside seat of a near brawl between the police and some hooligans.

I was walking with my family toward the Baseline Restaurant for dinner (walking was the right thing to do with traffic so snarled) and just as I got near the restaurant, a group of drunken hooligans were dancing at the intersection of Juaña Osmeña and R. Aboitiz street. Obviously, those guys were drinking earlier that afternoon while the parade was going on.

As motor vehicles inched their way out of the traffic jam, suddenly the hooligans pounced on a Grand Majestic Catering mini-van and rocked it so violently, it scared the driver out of his wits! A bigger aluminum van was behind the mini-van and they pounced on this van, too. One fellow even climbed up the roof dancing to the sheer delight of the drunken crowd.

Soon, any vehicle passing through the area got victimized… a couple of taxicabs were also pounced on. They stopped for a while when Miguel Osmeña, son of Mayor Tomas Osmeña, passed through on board a dune buggy. Obviously, they recognized the son of the mayor and didn’t want to bother him.

It was then that Councilor Raul "Yayoy" Alcoseba, who was also inside the Baseline Restaurant, called in the police to stop the hooligans. In less than five minutes, two police vehicles arrived. As expected, the drunkards tried to talk things out with the police… until suddenly a minor scuffle ensued. Then the SWAT team arrived as back-up and the police surrounded the hooligans.

It was then that someone approached Councilor Alcoseba to complain that a policeman hit him. Alcoseba calmly told him to file his complaint with the police station. But since I was beside the councilor, I told the complainant, "You shouldn’t complain, the police were sent in to stop you people from disturbing the peace." This guy left in a huff. Another fella approached me to complain that a policeman held him on the neck, and I also gave him the same reply, except that I asked for his name… and it turned out that his father is a good friend of mine.

Truth to tell, I was kind of disappointed that the police, with all their guns at the ready, didn’t round up these hooligans (two of them were white Caucasians, who joined in almost toppling the vans and taxicabs) because if I was in charge, that’s exactly what I would have done… so that the drunkards could explain their predicament inside the jail cell. It was then that I realized that the police officers were on a "maximum tolerance" mode and it was the first time that I was practically in-between the police and the hooligans who repeatedly tried to provoke the police, with only cars between us.

Who were those hooligans? Well, let me tell you that they were not squatters or left-leaning protesters; they were scions of rich people who were connected with a rugby football team. Some of them wore pink jerseys with flamingo emblazoned across the shirt. Last Monday, I was in a dinner party with Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama, who is also the chairman of the Sinulog Foundation Inc., and he told me that he learned about this incident from one of his friends seeking his help because a policeman allegedly hit him. Now he knows the real score!

Let me point out that we’ve exposed the shenanigans of the so-called scalawags belonging to the Philippine National Police (PNP) in this column so many times. But let me tell you that during the Sinulog celebration, hundreds of thousands of people went there to have lots and lots of fun. But there was a group of people out there who could not have fun while we’re having it! I’m referring to the people working in the various committees of the Sinulog Foundation: the judges, traffic enforcers, street sweepers and yes, our police officers who were on red alert to stop nasty incidents such as the one I witnessed.

I really felt that people, especially when they get drunk, do not respect the man in uniform. But I later realized that our policemen were trained to take the heat from protesters or hooligans and that night the policemen showed us that their thorough training and discipline had paid off. These police officers showed us how cool they were under such ugly conditions. I’m commending Cebu City police chief Melvin Gayotin and his men who were on red alert the whole day so that the Sinulog would be a big success.

Let me say that this incident was not even reported in the local dailies because most of the media people were out covering the Sinulog parade. I still wrote this column so that people will know that minor incidents such as these happened right after the Sinulog celebration.

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Finally, after dinner at the Baseline Restaurant, my cousin, Lulette Cañizares, asked me to join their table, where a dear friend, Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara, was also having dinner. Lupita helped direct my TV interview with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) at the Waterfront Hotel a month before the 2004 elections.

Lupita was so enthralled with the Sinulog celebration to the point of being envious because there’s nothing of this magnitude happening anywhere in the Philippines. However, she asked me if we could do something about the trash that people indiscriminately throw while watching the parade. Of course, I had to tell her that it has always been like this since time immemorial. But it was for me an eye-opener that perhaps the Sinulog Foundation can observe maximum tolerance on many other things, except on drunkenness and perhaps cleanliness.

I told Vice Mayor Mike Rama about this and he noted it… to check whether this can be done next year. He took it more as a challenge to improve on what we’ve already done. But cleanliness is a generational problem. Filipinos have yet to learn the values of cleanliness and Godliness.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.