It's almost a week since Dr. Gerardo Aquino, Hospital Medical Director of the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) blurted out before a Congressional hearing that the VSMMC really did not have any rules or guidelines for the medical staff to follow within the Operating Room. Yet he arbitrarily suspended the doctors and nurses linked to the YouTube controversy. Therefore if there were no such rules or guidelines, then anyone should be able do anything without fear of any reprimand.
But in this case, Dr. Aquino suspended the medical staff simply based on his whims! I call this grave abuse of authority. It just makes me wonder what the Office of the Ombudsman is doing about this problem. I would like to believe that the medical staff involved in that controversy has not been given proper justice. If you didn't know, Lady Justice is always portrayed with a blindfold and holds a balancing scale to signify impartiality regardless of who gets hurt in the process.
But in the VSMMC case, the medical staff has been subjected to a lynch mob style of justice by the investigating committee, who apparently have already made up their minds that the doctors and nurses were already guilty and the only thing left to do was exact Justice against the medical team. But then, the medical staff where instead subjected to injustice.
If Dr. Aquino didn't like the behavior of the medical staff after the operation was done, then he should have reprimanded them on how to behave inside the OR then enacted the rules and procedures for everyone in the OR to follow and put in the corresponding penalties for failure to follow those rules. So now whose fault is it that VSMMC didn't have those rules? This is why I said yesterday that Dr. Aquino should be subjected to an investigation himself as I find him guilty by omission! We will not stop our tirades until true jstice can really be done.
Meanwhile, we finally learned the real name of "Jan-Jan" as Genaro Jorolan who always maintained that he was humiliated by this incident. In truth, if the media did not harp on the fact that we've had to use an "alias" because we never knew his real name, we would never know what his real name was. I fully concur with the earlier observations of Msgr. Achilles Dakay about the behavior of some homosexuals like Genaro Jorolan who do kinky sex. If that spray can wasn't inserted in his behind, this would have been a non-issue. So if there is anyone to blame for this embarrassing mess, the blame goes to no one but Jorolan!
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I met our good friend Engr. Zoilo Cortes at the Redemptorist Church during mass with the Bukas Loob sa Diyos (BLD) and we talked about the widening of H. Cortes Ave. which until now still hasn't been widened. Despite the fact that both sides of this road is straddled by an open pit canal. Even before the closure of the Banilad-Talamban (Ban-Tal) intersection for the flyover, we've already pointed to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to have this road widened so that traffic would move smoothly. Right now traffic there is unbearable especially during rush hour.
I've been passing this road lately. While DPWH asphalted it well, it is still a two-lane road. I pity the long lines of vehicles in that area because our DPWH officials have shown that they do not care about us, taxpayers who pay their salaries! Now even if the Ban-Tal flyover is completed, H. Cortes Ave. still needs to be widened, after all it is a major artery that traverses in the middle of Mandaue City from M. L. Quezon Ave. all the way to Subangdaku flyover and the Mandaue Reclamation.
Talking about H. Cortes Ave. I asked Zoilo Cortes if this road was somehow named after their grandfather or anyone related to the Cortes family. But Zoilo's reply was totally unexpected! H. Cortes apparently isn't related to the Cortes family in Mandaue. According to Zoilo, this road is really named after Hernando Cortes de Monroy Pizarro (1485-1547) a Spanish Conquistador who conquered the Aztec Empire on behalf of King Charles V, King of Castile and the Holy Roman Emperor.
I was truly taken aback by this revelation. I would have thought that our national roads would be named after Filipino heroes, not Spanish ones who had no connection whatsoever with the Philippines except that Ferdinand Magellan and Cortes had the same employer in King Charles V. I can only hope that Zoilo is wrong on this. But if this is true, then perhaps Mandaue City can rename this street after a Filipino hero or at least a former President. How about naming it Pres. Diosdado Macapagal Ave.? Maybe, but only if Pres. Arroyo would widen this road into a six-lane highway!