Cebu City's streets are dark and unsafe

I’m writing this column with a sad heart and I’m also very mad as I just came from the wake of Juan Carlos “JC” Villordon, the 29-year old only son of our dear friends, Ramon and Arlene Villordon. JC was with his girlfriend Amiee Sembrano having a great time at Crossroads, but because Saturday night was a huge Sinulog night, parking inside Crossroads was full, so they parked their car across the street. At around 3:00am Sunday, as they were going to their car, three men alighted from their motorcycle and poked a gun at his girlfriend and snatched her necklace and the other fellow grabbed the camera of her sister. As they shouted for help, JC came to the rescue … but the robbers shot him point blank. He expired an hour later at the Perpetual Succor Hospital.

If you didn’t know, JC was in the graduating class in Australia. They were just in Cebu for a short visit. What’s doubly painful in this incident is that, way back in the year 2005, JC had a brush with death when he was parking his car at the South Road Properties (SRP) and a man poked a gun at him and fired point blank, hitting him in the jaw while the bullet grazed less than an inch from his spinal column.

That incident made the Villordon family decide that it was time to leave Cebu for good. Actually, JC’s parents were in the US when that incident happened. Now in this latest incident, his parents were also in the US. But this time, they returned to Cebu for the wake of their dead son.

We can only shrug our shoulders and ask God why did this happen to a fine young man who was studying in Australia and graduating this year. He came home for the Sinulog and the birthday of his child but it only ended in tragedy. At this point, it is up to the citizenry to wake up to the realization that many streets in Cebu City are dark and no longer safe as we think it is. Mind you, this did not happen in the seedy parts of Cebu or in some squatter colony where people dare not pass. It happened right there in Banilad where most of our tourists go.

Here we were enjoying the Sinulog, believing that there were no untoward incidents, but whether they like it or not, this was a Sinulog related incident as it happened during the Sinulog weekend. Perhaps Mayor Michael Rama did not notice that the area where JC was shot is dark as compared to Crossroads across the street. Call it ironic that the girls with JC did not know that the Emergency Rescue Unit Foundation (ERUF) was just a few meters away and they have emergency equipment that could have saved his life. Why no one came to their aid, especially the guards across in Crossroads or in ERUF is truly mysterious.

It was the first wake I attended this year and all I can say is this was a tragedy a few of us would never forget. Incidentally, the first friend to have died this year was the late Mr. Benson Dakay, who succumbed to cancer last Jan. 5. His remains arrived yesterday and is now at the Crystal Palace in Nivel. May we request our pious readers to please pray for their souls.

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One of the issues that the Regional Development Council (RDC-7) would tackle this year is the suggested return of the Anti-Carnapping (Ancar) Permit, which was put in place during the Martial Law years. Back in those days, even if your car wasn’t reported as stolen, you couldn’t bring it out of Cebu unless you secured an Ancar permit from the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) Traffic Division. This became a source for graft and corruption because certain car or motorcycle manufacturers had to grease the palms of unscrupulous traffic officials so they won’t need to bring their units to the Traffic Command office for processing.

Ancar permits were required supposedly to curb carnapping in the country. Yet despite having an Ancar permit, carnapping still became rampant simply because the corrupt Traffic Command officers could be bought even by carnapping syndicates. So this was removed during the first year of then Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Now the PNP under the Aquino Regime wants it back. No wonder, this country could never go forward!

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The Blackbox:

Ms. Lianne Sala of the Sala Foundation’s Peace Philharmonic Philippines emailed me that there will be a fundraising concert produced by the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral this coming Thursday Jan. 26, which will feature artists like Jimmy Tagala, Jr. a prodigy of my good friend Gilopez Kabayao who won the National Violin Competitions in Manila last year (NAMCYA Violin Category C), the Quartetto Espressivo- a string quartet from St. Scholastica’s College of Music, Manila, three of whom are Cebuanos who were trained scholars at the Sala Foundation’s Peace Philharmonic Philippines Program, and of course the Peace Philharmonic Philippines Youth Ensemble.

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