Everything happens in Pasig City today

What’s happening in Pasig City – right in the heart of Metro Manila? With Police Precinct 20 and Eastern Police District headquarters not far away, an empire of shabu was operating openly and insolently, not even bothering to conceal its existence. When a special Philippine National Police team (not from the area) raided the cluster of drug dens right inside a warren of shanties, they caught 300 persons, including fifty women and children "customers" in the shabu supermarket complex!

Don’t tell us the cross-eyed cops in the immediate neighborhood, or the EPD’s anti-narcotics police officers didn’t know what was going on right under their very noses. As PNP Director General Art Lomibao exclaimed: "This is incomprehensible. Mahirap paniwalaan!" You bet.

According to the "whistle blower" who deserves all the reward money he can get, the drug den had been operating for more than two years. How can the local police explain that? Remember, this is no ordinary crime we’re talking about – it’s a heinous crime, punishable by death.

Oh well. Nobody gets "executed" in this country anymore, thanks to the wishy-washy policy of President GMA who wants to please the Bishops and the European Union. Capital punishment? In this country it’s a joke – because it’s no longer implemented. The 2,000 congesting Death Row, probably, will only die of old age – or manage to escape.

If you ask me, it’s not just Pasig City Police Chief, Senior Supt. Raul Medina who must answer for the existence of the drug tiangge, within sniffing distance of the neighborhood Police Station. The rot has to go higher up.

As for Pasig Mayor Vicente Eusebio, I saw him on television threatening to kick out those squatters in whose "homes" the shabu market-market flourished and send them back to the provinces. What about the city officials who were deaf, dumb and blind? The shabu super-tiangge wasn’t far from City Hall either.

Everything seems to be happening in Pasig these days. Only last week there was the ULTRA stampede tragedy in which 74 died and hundreds were injured. It’s not just the fault of ABS-CBN’s "security" people and the mismanagement of the organizers of that ill-fated "Wowowee" event. The police were as much to blame, too, for their lack of enough police presence and their abject failure at crowd control. And where were Hizzoner the Mayor and his City Hall staffers when such a big mob threatened to spin out of control?

The murder of a former Congressman in a restaurant there hasn’t been solved either, if you’ll recall.

* * *

If the NCR – our National Capital Region – is in such confusion, what do you think might be happening in our farflung provinces?

The Pasig "embarrassment" demonstrates once again that our police organization is rotten – whether it’s rotten through and through remains to be seen. The next question is: What are we going to do about it?

It seems that question has been asked, again and again.

I remember when Senator Fred Lim first became Mayor of Manila. A former Director of the National Bureau of Investigation, and former Chief of Police, then Mayor Lim wanted to form his own Manila Police Force, independent of the nationally-oriented Integrated National Police. Lim argued, based on his experience, that the national Police were too crooked to correct, or clean up. He wanted to organize a brand-new Police Force, recruiting only college graduates, and training them properly in a Police Academy he planned to establish. "If you put rookies in the same barrel as crooked policemen," he warned, "the rotten apples will corrupt the rookies in no time."

Lim served two terms as Manila Mayor before he quit to run for President (he lost). When he tried to run for Manila Mayor again, his former Vice-Mayor Lito Atienza, whom he had installed as Mayor defeated him. After all, Atienza already controlled City Hall by then. And, as the old maxim goes: "You can’t fight City Hall."

In 2007, Atienza has to retire from Mayor owing to term limits. The buzz is that Fred Lim, although now a topnotch Senator, plans to chuck everything – and try again for Mayor of Manila again. Never say die, that’s Fred’s motto. He hopes to be the Comeback Kid in his beloved city – even if Manilans didn’t vote him back the third time around. Will Fighting Fred punch his way back into City Hall this time?

As for Lito, does he intend to field his son Kim, who, if memory serves us right, was flattened in his last electoral try?

What about Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson? Will he throw his cap into the race for Mayor, too?

The political pot is beginning to boil.

* * *

It was a delight to meet three energetic and brilliant new Ambassadors in a row. First there was Pakistan’s new envoy, H.E. Muhammad Naeem Khan, who is both articulate and enthusiastic, and a man of varied experience, from having been Spokesman of the Foreign Ministry to having served in the "fun" capitals of Madrid (Spain), San’a (Yemen), Washington DC, and Beijing.

Next there was the remarkably erudite and voluble new envoy from the Republic of Panama, Ambassador Juan Felipe Pitty. It was not only informative but entertaining to discuss a wealth of topics with this tall, well-built gentleman who spoke his native Spanish with a flourish, but, most of all, English in perfect American idiom since he had earned his Master’s (LL.M.) majoring in Admiralty Law from the renowned Tulane University in New Orleans (Louisiana) – of course long before the Big Easy had been inundated by Hurricane Katrina. Ambassador Pitty went to Tulane on an American Waterway Operators Scholarship and was elected president of the Tulane Maritime Law Society (1994). His graduated thesis was graded with the "highest honors" when he earned his Law Degree in 1993 from the Universidad Santa Maria La Antigua in Panama.

He was a practising lawyer, as attorney-partner in his own law firm, Pitty y Asociados. Indeed, he was President of the Maritime Law Commission and the National Bar Association (2003-2004).

Panama’s "fame" comes, naturally, from the vital Panama Canal which is under that Republic’s control, having taken it over from the United States when the Canal Zone was "returned" to the Republic.

But more important to us than that aspect is that – in case you didn’t know it – Panama maintains the largest merchant marine fleet in the world. Approximately three out of every 10 ships worldwide fly the Panamanian flag! More importantly, over 200,000 Filipino men and women sail the seas on Panamanian merchant vessels. They comprise the majority of the 300,000 officers and crew members on these ships.

Finally, the new Indonesian Ambassador, Professor Irzan Tandjung, called on this Publisher last Friday and he was absolutely charming and simpatico. Truly sama sama to put it in Bahasa Indonesia. The past few envoys from Jakarta had either been Admirals or Generals, with a military background – from the Angkata Bersandjata Republic Indonesia (ABRI) or the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI). This time, Ambassador Tandjung is an economist. Not just an economist, but one trained in the United States – with a Doctorate in Economic Sciences from the University of Illinois in Urbana, Champaign, Ill., USA in 1987. He got a Masters of Science from the same Institution in 1981, as well as a Master of Arts in Economic Sciences from Syracuse University in upstate New York. His Bachelor of Economics, of course, came from the University of Indonesia in Jakarta.

What’s more is that Dr. Tandjung, a Batak born in Medan in 1937, is a Christian – a Presbyterian.

When I was covering Indonesia in the old days, the Bataks were all great singers and intrepid fellows. The late Defense Minister, Gen. Abdul Harris Nasution, who might have become President (following his escape from being murdered by the Tjabirawa and the Partai Komunis Indonesia during the 1965 Gestapu coup) was both a Batak and a Christian himself.

Another Christian had been Vice-President and Economics Minister Adam Malik, my old friend who died of cancer many years ago. Indeed, in spite of the fact that Indonesia, with 220 million people is the biggest Muslim nation on earth, many Christians have risen to high office in that country, whose motto is emblazoned on its Republican seal, the Eagle: "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika." (Unity Out of Diversity). In any event, for more about Dr. Tandjung, see the photo on page one.

We’re happy that the new crop of envoys – Tandjung for one amazed that within days of his arrival he was able to present his credentials to President GMA, when it usually takes weeks of waiting – are both upbeat about our country, and eager to get to know us. We bid them Bienvenidos and Salamat Datang!